Secure and Compact Elliptic Curve LR Scalar Multiplication

Abstract

Elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) can ensure an equivalent security with much smaller key sizes. Elliptic curve scalar multiplication (ECSM) is a fundamental computation used in ECC. This paper focuses on ECSM resisting simple power attack and safe error attack of side-channel attack specifically. Elliptic curve complete addition (CA) formulae can achieve secure ECSM algorithms but are inefficient from memory and computational cost perspectives. Another secure ECSM, which uses (extended) affine, is more efficient for both memory and computational costs. However, it scans input scalars from right to left. In this paper, our developed scalar multiplication algorithms also use their extended affine, but scan from left to right (LR). We also prove the security of our LR ECSM algorithms and analyze them both theoretically and experimentally. Our new LR ECSM algorithms can reduce the amount of memory by \(37.5\%\) and reduce the computational time by more than \(40\%\) compared to Joye’s regular 2-ary LR algorithm with CA formulae.