Securing elliptic curve point multiplication against side-channel attacks

Abstract

For making elliptic curve point multiplication secure against side-channel attacks, various methods have been proposed using special point representations for specifically chosen elliptic curves. We show that the same goal can be achieved based on conventional elliptic curve arithmetic implementations. Our point multiplication method is much more general than the proposals requiring non-standard point representations; in particular, it can be used with the curves recommended by NIST and SECG. It also provides efficiency advantages over most earlier proposals.