Sung Min Cho

Sung Min Cho

*This is an algorithmically generated author record based on publicly available information.

Sung Min Cho has a total of 8 co-authors. Here are the top co-authors by number of shared publications:


Latest Publications

  • Open Access

    Enhanced Side-Channel Analysis on ECDSA Employing Fixed-Base Comb Method

    by Sunghyun Jin, Sung Min Cho, HeeSeok Kim, Seokhie Hong

    Table-based scalar multiplication provides practical security for ECDSA signature generation. However, a novel key recovery attack against this form of ECDSA signature generation that exploits the collisions between entries was recently proposed at CHES 2021. This attack is possible even if table entries are unknown, such as with random permutated entry ordering. In this paper, we enhance the efficiency of the key recovery attack against secure ECDSA signature generation based on fixed-base comb scalar multiplication. We significantly reduce the required number of traces by compressing collision information using the mathematical relationship between table entry collisions. We verify this is a practical threat by performing an experiment on fixed-base comb method with window width $w=4$. Using our method, up to 27 traces are needed, much fewer than 1,019 traces required in the CHES publication. We cluster real traces measured using 32-bit STM32F4 microcontroller. In the experiment, we provide a selection method of points of interest using variance traces and unsupervised clustering-based leakage detection. With the selection method, we succeed in clustering leakages into 16 classes with a 100% success rate with 32-bit MCU. This represents the first experiment to cluster the more leakage classes with a 32-bit MCU than in literature.


  • Open Access

    Efficient implementation of modular multiplication over 192-bit NIST prime for 8-bit AVR-based sensor node

    by Dong-Won Park, Seokhie Hong, Nam Su Chang, Sung Min Cho

    Modular multiplication is one of the most time-consuming operations that account for almost 80% of computational overhead in a scalar multiplication in elliptic curve cryptography. In this paper, we present a new speed record for modular multiplication over 192-bit NIST prime P-192 on 8-bit AVR ATmega microcontrollers. We propose a new integer representation named Range Shifted Representation (RSR) which enables an efficient merging of the reduction operation into the subtractive Karatsuba multiplication. This merging results in a dramatic optimization in the intermediate accumulation of modular multiplication by reducing a significant amount of unnecessary memory access as well as the number of addition operations. Our merged modular multiplication on RSR is designed to have two duplicated groups of 96-bit intermediate values during accumulation. Hence, only one accumulation of the group is required and the result can be used twice. Consequently, we significantly reduce the number of load/store instructions which are known to be one of the most time-consuming operations for modular multiplication on constrained devices. Our implementation requires only 2888 cycles for the modular multiplication of 192-bit integers and outperforms the previous best result for modular multiplication over P-192 by a factor of 17%. In addition, our modular multiplication is even faster than the Karatsuba multiplication (without reduction) which achieved a speed record for multiplication on AVR processor.


  • Open Access

    A Combined Single Trace Attack on Global Shuffling Long Integer Multiplication and its Novel Countermeasure

    by Sangyub Lee, Sung Min Cho, Heeseok Kim, Seokhie Hong

    Advanced collision-based single trace attacks which can be applied on simple power analysis resistant scalar multiplications become virtual threat on elliptic curve cryptosystems recently as their practical experimental results are increasingly reported in the literature. Since such attacks are based on detecting collisions of data dependent leakage caused by underlying long integer multiplications, so-called global shuffling countermeasure which breaks such collision correlation by independently randomizing the execution order of unit operations such as single precision multiplication and carry propagation, is considered as promising countermeasure if theoretical randomness of shuffling order is guaranteed. In this paper, we firstly analyze the practical security of the global shuffling long integer multiplications by exhibiting a combined single trace attack on software implementations on an ARM Cortex-M4 microcontroller. Our combined attack consists of a simple power analysis for revealing random permutation vectors which enables later collision-based single trace attack. First we demonstrate how to reveal random permutation vectors for carry propagation process of whole global shuffling long integer multiplications within a single power trace by simple power analysis accompanied with straightforward substitution of power consumption samples. Then we perform collision-based single trace attacks after rearranging the order of subtraces for unit carry propagations based on revealed permutation vectors. Since the vulnerability to simple power analysis is originated from the if-statement for selection of proper entries of the permutation vectors, we propose a novel countermeasure which eliminates such selection with simple addition and modulus operation and also demonstrate practical result achieving regularity in power trace patterns.


  • Open Access

    Side-Channel Vulnerabilities of Unified Point Addition on Binary Huff Curve and Its Countermeasure

    by Sung Min Cho, Sunghyun Jin, HeeSeok Kim

    Unified point addition for computing elliptic curve point addition and doubling is considered to be resistant to simple power analysis. Recently, new side-channel attacks, such as recovery of secret exponent by triangular trace analysis and horizontal collision correlation analysis, have been successfully applied to elliptic curve methods to investigate their resistance to side-channel attacks. These attacks turn out to be very powerful since they only require leakage of a single power consumption trace. In this paper, using these side-channel attack analyses, we introduce two vulnerabilities of unified point addition on the binary Huff curve. Also, we propose a new unified point addition method for the binary Huff curve. Furthermore, to secure against these vulnerabilities, we apply an equivalence class to the side-channel atomic algorithm using the proposed unified point addition method.