Countermeasure of ECC against Side-Channel Attacks: Balanced Point Addition and Point Doubling Operation Procedure

Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) has become widely deployed in embedded cryptographic devices. However, power analysis attacks may retrieve secret keys by exploiting the power consumption of ECC devices. This paper proposes a countermeasure with balanced operation procedure of point doubling and addition during the scalar multiplication implementation of ECC algorithms. Experiment results on smart cards demonstrate this balanced method can largely enhance the secure against side-channel attacks.