Securing Openssl Against Micro-Architectural Attacks

Abstract

Abstract:This paper presents a version of the 2 k -ary modular exponentiation algorithm that is secure against current methods of side-channel analysis that can be applied to PCs (the so-called micro-architectural attacks). Some optimisations to the basic algorithm are also proposed to improve the efficiency of an implementation. The proposed algorithm is compared to the current implementation of OpenSSL, and it is shown that the proposed algorithm is more robust than the current implementation.