4 ms·
I was not questioning the impact of their demonstration, which is really impressive. However, being responsible academics, they should have done their related w
by ge0rg 11y ago
I was not questioning the impact of their demonstration, which is really impressive.
However, being responsible academics, they should have done their related work research. And when doing related work research on side-channel attacks against elliptic curves, it is hardly possible to miss Curve25519 and the fact that it was designed with side-channel attacks in mind. The authors at least reference earlier work by DJB on attacking AES.
Also, Curve25519 is only side-channel resistant to timing side-channels, this does NOT protect it in any way against the EM side-channels exploited in this paper.
This only reinforces the point that performing an EM side-channel attack on Curve25519/NaCl/Sodium would have been a good contribution to the state of the art, with mentioning Curve25519 in the "Future work" section a viable second.