26#TIMING ATTACKS ON IMPLEMENTATIONS OF DIFFIE

Abstract

By carefully measuring the amount of time required to perform private key operations, attackers may be able to find fixed Diffie-Hellman exponents, factor RSA keys, and break other cryptosystems.Against a vulnerable system, the attack is computationally inexpensive and often requires only known ciphertext. Actual systems are potentially at risk, including cryptographic tokens, network-based cryptosystems, and other applications where attackers can make reasonably accurate timing measurements. Techniques for preventing the attack for RSA and Diffie-Hellman are presented. Some cryptosystems will need to be re-vised to protect against the attack, and new protocols and algorithms may need to incorporate measures to prevent timing attacks. Keywords: timing attack, cryptanalysis, RSA, Diffie-Hellman, DSS.