Attacks on weak implementations of RSA

• Main Author: Kok, Zi Ming
• Other Authors: Tay Kian Boon
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2021
• Subjects: Engineering::Computer science and engineering
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/148138
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

RSA an acronym which comes from the surnames of Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman who first publicly described the algorithm in 1977, is one of the first practicable public-key cryptosystem that is widely used to secure data transmitted digitally in the public. Since then, researchers and cryptanalysts have been looking for ways to attack it. Though long years of research had produced numerous attacks on it, none of them is successful if the algorithm is implemented correctly and the device implementing it does not leak any or enough information on the primes or the secret key used during the execution of the algorithm. This project will be looking into the attacks targeting some of the weak implementations of RSA. The project focuses on attacks such as using Wiener theorem to break implementations that used short private key for the algorithm, Coron’s simplified approach with Coppersmith theorem to break implementations that have partial exposure of the parameter primes used during execution of the algorithm, and attacks on some of the possible misconfigurations used by the developers or vendors.