SE Manager Key Agreement (ECDH)

This example uses the SE Manager API to perform the key agreement (ECDH) on the supported Series 2 device.

The Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman (ECDH) is an anonymous key agreement protocol that allows two parties, each having an elliptic curve public-private key pair, to establish a shared secret over an insecure channel.

In this example, two peers (client and server) each generate their Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) key pair. They exchange public keys and compute a shared secret using their private ECC keys. These secrets are compared with each other to make sure they are equal.

The example redirects standard I/O to the virtual serial port (VCOM) of the kit. By default, the serial port setting is 115200 bps and 8-N-1 configuration.

The example has been instrumented with code to count the number of clock cycles spent in different operations. The results are printed on the VCOM serial port console. This feature can be disabled by defining SE_MANAGER_PRINT=0 (default is 1) in the IDE setting (Preprocessor->Defined symbols).

Key Type

The following key types are supported in this example:

Elliptic Curve Key

The following elliptic curve keys are supported in this example:

ECC Weierstrass Prime :
ECC Montgomery :

SE Manager API

The following SE Manager APIs are used in this example:

Getting Started

  1. Upgrade the kit’s firmware to the latest version (see Adapter Firmware under General Device Information in Simplicity Studio 5 Users Guide).
  2. Upgrade the device’s SE firmware to the latest version (see Secure Firmware under General Device Information in Simplicity Studio 5 Users Guide).
  3. Open any terminal program and connect to the kit’s VCOM port (if using Device Console in Simplicity Studio 5, Line terminator: must be set to None).
  4. Create this platform example project in the Simplicity IDE (see Examples in Simplicity Studio 5 Users Guide, check Platform() checkbox to browse the platform examples).
  5. Build the example and download it to the kit (see Simple Build and Flash Programmer in Simplicity Studio 5 Users Guide).
  6. Run the example and follow the instructions shown on the console.

Additional Information

  1. The default optimization level is Optimize for debugging (-Og) on Simplicity IDE and None on IAR Embedded Workbench.