Fault Attack and Countermeasures on Pairing Based Cryptography

Bilinear pairing is a new and increasingly popular way ofconstructing cryptographic protocols. This has resulted in thedevelopment of {sf I}dentity {sf B}ased {sf E}ncryption (IBE)that is ideally used in identity aware devices. The security ofsuch devices using pairing algorithms against side-channel andfault attack has not been studied extensively. This paper examinesthe security of existing countermeasures and show their weaknessagainst fault attacks. Subsequently, it proposes a newcountermeasure that prevents such kind of attacks. The paper alsodiscusses for the first time fault attacks and countermeasuresagainst bilinear pairing in Edwards coordinates.