Fast implementation of NIST p-256 elliptic curve cryptography on 8-bit AVR processor

Abstract

In this paper, we present a highly optimized implementation of elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) over NIST P-256 curve for an 8-bit AVR microcontroller. For improving the performance of ECC implementation, we focus on optimizing field arithmetics. In particular, we optimize the modular multiplication and squaring method exploiting the state-of-the-art optimization technique, namely range shifted representation (RSR). With optimized field arithmetics, we significantly improve the performance of scalar multiplication and set the speed record for execution time of variable base scalar multiplication over NIST P-256 curve. When compared with previous works, we achieve a performance gain of 17.3% over the best previous result on the same platform. Moreover, the execution time of our result is even faster than that over the NIST P-192 curve of the well-known TinyECC library. Our result shows that RSR can be applied to all field arithmetics and evaluate the impact of the adoption of RSR over the performance of scalar multiplication. Additionally, our implementation provides a high degree of regularity to withstand side-channel attacks.