Elliptic curve cryptography algorithms resistant against power analysis attacks on resource constrained devices

Elliptic Curve Cryptosystems (ECC) have been adopted as a standardized Public Key Cryptosystems (PKC) by IEEE, ANSI, NIST, SEC and WTLS. In comparison to traditional PKC like RSA and ElGamal, ECC offer equivalent security with smaller key sizes, in less computation time, with lower power consumption, as well as memory and bandwidth savings. Therefore, ECC have become a vital technology, more popular and considered to be particularly suitable for implementation on resource constrained devices such as the Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN). Major problem with the sensor nodes in WSN as soon as it comes to cryptographic operations is their extreme constrained resources in terms of power, space, and time delay, which limit the sensor capability to handle the additional computations required by cryptographic operations. Moreover, the current ECC implementations in WSN are particularly vulnerable to Side Channel Analysis (SCA) attacks; in particularly to the Power Analysis Attacks (PAA), due to the lack of secure physical shielding, their deployment in remote regions and it is left unattended. Thus designers of ECC cryptoprocessors on WSN strive to introduce algorithms and architectures that are not only PAA resistant, but also efficient with no any extra cost in terms of power, time delay, and area. The contributions of this thesis to the domain of PAA aware elliptic curve cryptoprocessor for resource constrained devices are numerous. Firstly, we propose two robust and high efficient PAA aware elliptic curve cryptoprocessors architectures based on innovative algorithms for ECC core operation and envisioned at securing the elliptic curve cryptoprocessors against Simple Power Analysis (SPA) attacks on resource constrained devices such as the WSN. Secondly, we propose two additional architectures that are envisioned at securing the elliptic curve cryptoprocessors against Differential Power Analysis (DPA) attacks. Thirdly, a total of eight architectures which includes, in addition to the two SPA aware with the other two DPA awareproposed architectures, two more architectures derived from our DPA aware proposed once, along with two other similar PAA aware architectures. The eight proposed architectures are synthesized using Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technology. Fourthly, the eight proposed architectures are analyzed and evaluated by comparing their performance results. In addition, a more advanced comparison, which is done on the cost complexity level (Area, Delay, and Power), provides a framework for the architecture designers to select the appropriate design. Our results show a significant advantage of our proposed architectures for cost complexity in comparison to the other latest proposed in the research field.

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Source https://theses.hal.science/tel-00832795
Author Houssain, Hilal
Maintainer CCSD
Last Updated May 10, 2026, 18:42 (UTC)
Created May 10, 2026, 18:42 (UTC)
Identifier NNT: 2012CLF22286
Language en
Rights https://about.hal.science/hal-authorisation-v1/
contributor Laboratoire d'Informatique, de Modélisation et d'optimisation des Systèmes (LIMOS) ; Université Blaise Pascal - Clermont-Ferrand 2 (UBP)-Université d'Auvergne - Clermont-Ferrand I (UdA)-SIGMA Clermont (SIGMA Clermont)-Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines de St Etienne (ENSM ST-ETIENNE)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
creator Houssain, Hilal
date 2012-12-21T00:00:00
harvest_object_id 438d233c-632a-46d2-9683-57e769fa4995
harvest_source_id 3374d638-d20b-4672-ba96-a23232d55657
harvest_source_title test moissonnage SELUNE
metadata_modified 2026-03-30T00:00:00
set_spec type:THESE