Σχεδιασμός κρυπτογραφικών συστημάτων δημοσίου κλειδιού

Abstract

In this PhD dissertation the cryptographic schemes of RSA and elliptic curve cryptography were studied extensively in order to propose design methodologies for those schemes that are efficient in terms of computation speed and employed hardware resources. In the proposed methodologies special attention is given in the optimization of finite field arithmetic operations employed in public key cryptography. The most widely used such fields are the prime fields or GF(p) and the binary extension fields or GF(2^k) Concerning GF(p) arithmetic, an optimized version of Montgomery modulo multiplication algorithm is proposed for performing modular multiplication that employs Carry - Save redundant logic and value precomputation. The resulting architecture is used in a modular exponentiation unit (which is the basic arithmetic operation of RSA. The proposed unit achieves much better results in terms of computation speed and utilized hardware resources when compared to other well known similar designs. Concerning arithmetic in GF(2^k), algorithms and architectures are proposed for versatile design and inversion when polynomial basis representation of the GF(2^k)is employed. Also, a multiplication design methodology is proposed along with resulting sequential (SMPO) and parallel hardware architectures when normal basis representation of the GF(2k) is chosen. Finally, on elliptic curve arithmetic defined over GF(p) or GF(2^k) the proposed architectures for those fields were used in order to propose a competitive elliptic curve point operation arithmetic unit. The major problem of such a unit is the extensive cost in hardware resources and computation delay of finite field inversion operation. Using the architectural structure proposed in the PhD dissertation for inversion/multiplication in GF(2^k) (multiplication/inversion unit) the design cost can be minimized.