## Book review: Nothing left to do for my phd thesis

I have just finished skimming through “Elliptic Curve Cryptography for Constrained Devices – Algorithms, Architectures and Practical Implementation” by Sandeep S. Kumar.

The guy have done software design of ECDH key exchange on an 8-bit processor, hardware/software co-design on extensions for an 8-bit processor and 32-bit processor, hardware design for optimal digit multipliers for $F_{2^{m}}$,  hardware design for ECC in the frequency domain and hardware design for tiny ECC processor over $F_{2^{m}}$!!!

He just did everything! The open problems he mentioned at the end of the book was those stuff related to optimizing power to be extremely efficient on constrained devices, thus to make it strong against the side channel attacks.

Oh well…

• #### Budi Rahardjo 7:43 am on December 30, 2008 Permalink | Reply

There’s ALWAYS something to do (to improve).

A few years ago (actually, light years ago – ha ha ha) a person in the US patent office said that everything that has to be invented already invented. Well, he was wrong (back then and is wrong today!). I can smell things to improve from his work (judging by skimming his book a while ago). If you’re lucky, you may even find nifty things to explore.

Keep the spirit high…

• #### CG 8:47 am on December 30, 2008 Permalink | Reply

@BR: you smell something nifty? sniff sniff… i smell nothing! 😀 heeeeeeeeeelllpppp!!!

• #### Budi Rahardjo 9:40 am on December 30, 2008 Permalink | Reply

I think you have to update your roadmap(s) first. Then, we can look at things that have been done and things that we still need to explore. It doesn’t have to be a complete roadmap but a fairly decent one.

• #### CG 9:59 am on December 30, 2008 Permalink | Reply

@BR: still trying to make one. things are scattered and misplaced and I’m still gathering them

• #### tetanga 6:17 pm on January 12, 2009 Permalink | Reply

makanya baca buku gak usah yang susah2 coba baca nya buku crypto yang ini aja http://www.amazon.com/Cryptoclub-Using-Mathematics-Break-Secret/dp/156881223X jadi bisa baca bareng ama shahna dan fizan

• #### CG 9:52 am on January 16, 2009 Permalink | Reply

hi hi hi hi bagus bukunya, thx 🙂

## Yes, it is implementable, but how?

Reading the third chapter of this book, I’m astonished that ECC (ECDH) is implementable on Chipcon CC1010 chip which consists of an 8-bit 8051 processor core with a built-in radio transceiver and a hardware DES engine. It containts 32 kb of flash memory for storing programs, 2048 bytes of SRAM external to the 8051 core (XRAM), and 128 bytes of internal SRAM (IRAM).

Now the question is, without using any additional extra hardware, how to build codes calculating those complex operation of ECC that fits those small memories???

[screaming in horror…]

• #### Budi Rahardjo 7:40 am on December 30, 2008 Permalink | Reply

Well, if he can do it, you can too.

A few years ago, I have a student porting Linux to a constraint device; 8-bit processor with 8kB (or was it 16kB?) RAM. It worked.

I am not saying that it is easy, but it can be done.

• #### CG 8:34 am on December 30, 2008 Permalink | Reply

@BR: do you have the sample of the source code of Linux ported to a constrained device? Is it in assembly?

• #### Budi Rahardjo 8:57 am on December 30, 2008 Permalink | Reply

Source code Linux kan terbuka, jadi bisa dilihat. Memang ada bagian (kecil) yang bentuknya assembly, tetapi sebagian besar tetap dalam C. Compilenya dilakukan di PC dengan resource yang besar (running Linux) dengan menggunakan gcc untuk cross compile.

• #### CG 9:04 am on December 30, 2008 Permalink | Reply

@BR: we definitely have to discuss more about this! and you’ve got to show me some stuff!

How much RAM do you need to implement ECC (ECDH)? Cramming the memory into 2048+128 of RAM is not really easy if you’re used to 2GB of RAM.

• #### CG 7:11 am on January 2, 2009 Permalink | Reply

@waskita: as small as possible. and i’m used to 1GB of RAM :((

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