Abstract:
A method and apparatus are proposed for cryptographic computations implemented in an electronic component. The method includes determining the cofactor of an elliptic curve E defined over a finite field Fq with q elements, the elliptic curve comprising a base point P having an order equal to n. The step of determining includes determining a value of floor((q+2ceil(b/2)+1+1)/n) when n>6√q, where the function ceil corresponds to the ceiling function, floor corresponds to the floor function, and b corresponds to the size q in number of bits of q.