A Low-Power BLS12-381 Pairing Cryptoprocessor for Internet-of-Things Security Applications

We present the first BLS12-381 elliptic-curve pairing cryptoprocessor for Internet-of-Things (IoT) security applications. Efficient finite-field arithmetic and algorithm-architecture co-optimizations together enable two orders of magnitude energy savings. We implement several countermeasures against timing and power side-channel attacks. Our cryptoprocessor is programmable to provide the flexibility to accelerate various elliptic-curve and pairing-based protocols, such as signature aggregation and functional encryption.