An Elliptic Curve Cryptographic System Design Architecture with Application to Distributed Simulation

Abstract

Distributed simulation, outside of the military area, necessarily operates over the internet, which implies the risk of many forms of attack. Current security systems offer limited protection because of the cost and complexity of using sufficient key length in existing public key encryption schemes. The use of the Discrete Logarithm Problem over elliptic curves defined over finite fields as a basis for trap-door based public key encryption (ECC) appears to offer improved performance with lower cost in terms of processor speed, memory requirement and processing time. This paper provides an outline of ECC and the complexities of a practical implementation of the technology. Some issues regarding choice of EC parameters, security, interoperability and performance are discussed. A proposal is made for a tool set to enable development of a broad range of elliptic function based methods, by providing the top level of required modules. This enables further development of particular encryption schemes in a structured way to meet the particular needs of the cryptographic systems designer. Such cryptographic systems may be considered suitable for supporting distributed interactive simulation, with its stringent timing requirements and particular security problems, and with special reference to mobile systems.