The ECP group structure. We consider two types of curve equations: Short Weierstrass: y^2 = x^3 + A x + B mod P (SEC1 + RFC-4492) Montgomery: y^2 = x^3 + A x^2 + x mod P (Curve25519, Curve448) In both cases, the generator (\p G) for a prime-order subgroup is fixed. For Short Weierstrass, this subgroup is the whole curve, and its cardinality is denoted by \p N. Our code requires that \p N is an odd prime as mbedtls_ecp_mul() requires an odd number, and mbedtls_ecdsa_sign() requires that it is prime for blinding purposes. The default implementation only initializes \p A without setting it to the authentic value for curves with A = -3(SECP256R1, etc), in which case you need to load \p A by yourself when using domain parameters directly, for example:
mbedtls_mpi_init(&A);
mbedtls_ecp_group_init(&grp);
CHECK_RETURN(mbedtls_ecp_group_load(&grp, grp_id));
if (mbedtls_ecp_group_a_is_minus_3(&grp)) {
CHECK_RETURN(mbedtls_mpi_sub_int(&A, &grp.P, 3));
} else {
CHECK_RETURN(mbedtls_mpi_copy(&A, &grp.A));
}
do_something_with_a(&A);
cleanup:
mbedtls_mpi_free(&A);
mbedtls_ecp_group_free(&grp);
For Montgomery curves, we do not store \p A, but (A + 2) / 4, which is the quantity used in the formulas. Additionally, \p nbits is not the size of \p N but the required size for private keys. If \p modp is NULL, reduction modulo \p P is done using a generic algorithm. Otherwise, \p modp must point to a function that takes an \p mbedtls_mpi in the range of 0..2^(2*pbits)-1, and transforms it in-place to an integer which is congruent mod \p P to the given MPI, and is close enough to \p pbits in size, so that it may be efficiently brought in the 0..P-1 range by a few additions or subtractions. Therefore, it is only an approximate modular reduction. It must return 0 on success and non-zero on failure.