Template Attack To ECC Scalar Multiplication On Smart Cards

Currently, smart cards have been widely used in our social life. While smart cards bring people convenience, they are often attacked by hackers. Among all attack methods, the side channel attack is the most powerful attack. How to effectively defend against the side channel attack has become the focus of research in the field of smart card security. Template attack is a new side channel attack method. This paper is focused on template attack. The template attack uses the multivariate normal distribution to characterizing the smart card. The entire attack process can be divided into two steps: template building and template matching.In the first, this paper presents the methods of ECC (Elliptic Curve Cryptography) and template attack. Then, referring to the differential power analysis attack, a template attack method to scalar multiplication algorithm is proposed on a smart card. The scalar is the target of this method in the scalar multiplication. And the templates can be built by a real-time way. The points of interest are selected by calculating correlation and using the multivariate normal distribution to match the correct template. The countermeasures to this template attack method is also be researched. Finally, the attack environment is built to practice this template attack method. In this experiment, the Montgomery algorithm in binary filed as the target is attacked successfully. But if the countermeasure is used, the attack method fails. The results of the experiment show that this attack method without countermeasures can break the Montgomery algorithm successfully and it can’t break the algorithm with its countermeasures. The defensive measures are effective to protect the smart card from the template attack.