I was interested in your thoughts around the use of ECC for a smart cards soluti

Question

I was interested in your thoughts around the use of ECC for a smart cards solution as I would have a differing view. While it seems that ECC, with its small key size is ideal, I myself would have worries about the likes of side channel and timing attacks as mentioned by Stolbikova (2018). As smart cards are relatively small the chances of a hacker getting their hands on them is higher than say a system based in a data center for this type of attack. Would you be worried about this in terms of your proposed implementation and the risks of those attacks?

Also, the likes of the backdoors the NSA developed as discussed by Schneier (2007) would make me wary here too, especially if the smart cards had any sort of personal information on them. Are there alternatives to ECC that would provide a better option – or is ECC the best of the available technologies at the moment?

Explanation / Answer

Messages and data are often encrypted using some algorithms or keys to prevent them from threat of theft and unauthorized access. Elliptical curve cryptography is one of the very popular techniques to create keys which are efficient, smaller and fast keys for encryptions. 160 bit encryption by ECC provides same security as that of RSA algorithm generated keys.

Smart cards are small micro chipped cards which can are designed to store information and data which needs to be protected from any unauthorized access. Let us look into some detail how ECC can be useful for the smart cards security.

-Algorithm of ECC uses small keys as compared to other encryption algorithms such as RSA which in turn helps in reducing memory size which is required for its storage and less time for transfer in between card ad security read software which helps in reading and authorizing access.

- ECC helps in maintain cost as few system resources are required as compared to other algorithms due to smaller keys and high security

- Keys are can be generated on the card with ECC due to short time required for the generation of keys and no co processor is required which helps in saving time and memory both

ECC has open contest known as sponsors which ask for telling any loop hole or break in the ECC keys.

Some of the weak ECC key do get broken with 109 bit key took four years to get cracked but 163 bit key is still going strong.

Though ECC helps in saving cost , Time and memory with strong encryption but in term of implementation it is much more complicated when comparing with other cryptographic keys generating algorithms as it needs tough mathematical situations to deal with.

Alternative of ECC is one RSA algorithm based key which used two algorithms, one for keys and other for signature and has less difficult mathematics involved but at the cost of more time, memory and cost.

As of now RSA is well established in terms of smart card security with ECC being the future of cryptography.

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