From time to time, I hear people saying that Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) cannot be used to directly encrypt data, and you can only do key agreement and digital signatures with it. This is a common misconception, but it’s not actually true: you can indeed use elliptic curve keys to encrypt arbitrary data. And I’m not talking about hybrid-encryption schemes (like ECIES or HPKE): I’m talking about pure elliptic curve encryption, and I’m going to show an example of it in this article. It’s true however that pure elliptic curve encryption is not widely used or standardized because, as I will explain at the end of the article, key agreement is more convenient for most applications.

# Quick recap on Elliptic Curve Cryptography

I wrote an in-depth article about elliptic curve cryptography in the past on this blog, and here is a quick recap: points on an elliptic curve from an interesting algebraic structure: a cyclic group. This group lets us do some algebra with the points of the elliptic curve: if we have two points $A$ and $B$, we can add them ($A + B$) or subtract them ($A - B$). We can also multiply a point by an integer, which is the same as doing repeated addition ($n A$ = $A + A + \cdots + A$, $n$ times).

We know some efficient algorithms for doing multiplication, but the reverse of multiplication is believed to be a “hard” problem for certain elliptic curves, in the sense that we know efficient methods for computing $B = n A$ given $n$ and $A$, but we do not know very efficient methods to figure out $n$ given $A$ and $B$. This problem of reversing a multiplication is known as Elliptic Curve Discrete Logarithm Problem (ECDLP).

Elliptic Curve Cryptography is based on multiplication of elliptic curve points by integers and its security is given mainly by the difficulty of solving the ECDLP.

In order to use Elliptic Curve Cryptography, we first have to generate a private-public key pair:

• the private key is a random integer $s$;
• the public key is the result of multiplying the integer $s$ with the generator $G$ of the elliptic curve group: $P = s G$.

Let’s now see a method to use Elliptic Curve Cryptography to encrypt arbitrary data, so that we can demystify the common belief that elliptic curves cannot be used to encrypt.

# Elliptic Curve ElGamal

One method to encrypt data with elliptic curve keys is ElGamal. This is not the only method, of course, but it’s the one that I chose because it’s well known and simple enough. ElGamal is a cryptosystem that takes the name from its author and works on any cyclic group, not just elliptic curve groups.

If we want to encrypt a message using the public key $P$ via ElGamal, we can do the following:

1. map the message to a point $M$ on the elliptic curve
2. generate a random integer $t$
3. compute $C_1 = t G$
4. compute $C_2 = t P + M$
5. return the tuple $(C_1, C_2)$

To decrypt an encrypted tuple $(C_1, C_2)$ using the private key $s$, we can do the following:

1. compute $M = C_2 - s C_1$
2. map the point $M$ back to a message

The scheme works because: \begin{align*} s C_1 & = s (t G) \\ & = t (s G) \\ & = t P \end{align*} therefore: \begin{align*} C_2 - s C_1 & = (t P + M) - (t P) \\ & = M \end{align*}

There’s however a big problem with this scheme: how do we map a message to a point, and vice versa? How can we perform step 1 of the encryption algorithm, or step 2 of the decryption algorithm?

# Mapping a message to a point

A message can be an arbitrary byte string. An elliptic curve point is, generally speaking, a pair of integers $(x, y)$ belonging to the elliptic curve field. How can we transform a byte string into a pair of field integers?

Well, as far as computers are concerned, both byte strings and integers have the same nature: they are just sequences of bits, so there’s a natural map between the two. We could take the message, split it into two parts, and interpret the first part as an integer $x$ and the second part as an integer $y$. This would work for obtaining two arbitrary integers, but there’s a problem: the coordinates $x$ and $y$ of an elliptic curve point are related by a mathematical equation (the curve equation), so we cannot choose two arbitrary $x$ and $y$ and expect them to identify a valid point on the curve. In fact, for curves in Weierstrass form, given $x$ there are at most two possible choices for $y$, so it’s very unlikely that this splitting method will yield a valid point.

Let’s change our strategy a little bit: instead of transforming the message to a pair $(x, y)$, we transform it to $x$ and then we compute a valid $y$ from the curve equation. This is a much better method, but there’s still a problem: generally speaking, not every $x$ will have a corresponding $y$. Not every $x$ can satisfy the curve equation.

Luckily, most of the popular elliptic curves used in cryptography have an interesting property: about half of the possible field integers are valid $x$-coordinates. To see this, let’s take a look at an example: the curve secp384r1. This is a Weierstrass curve that has the following order:

0xffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffc7634d81f4372ddf581a0db248b0a77aecec196accc52973


I remind you that the order is the number of valid points that belong to the elliptic curve group. Because this is a Weierstrass curve, for each $x$ there are 2 possible points, so the number of valid $x$-coordinates is order / 2. Given an arbitrary 384-bit integer, what are the chances that this is a valid $x$-coordinate? The answer is (order / 2) / (2 ** 384) which is approximately 0.5 or 50%.

OK, but how does this help with our goal: mapping an arbitrary message to a valid $x$-coordinate? It’s simple: we can append a random byte (or multiple bytes) to the message. We call this extra byte (or bytes): padding. If the resulting padded message does not translate to a valid $x$-coordinate, we choose another random padding and try again, until we find one that works. Given that there’s 50% chance of finding a valid $x$ coordinate, this method will find a valid $x$-coordinate very quickly: on average, this will happen on the first or the second try.

This operation can be easily reversed: if you have a point $(x, y)$, in order to recover the message that generated it, just take the $x$ coordinate and remove the padding. That’s it!

It’s worth noting that there are some standard curves where all the possible byte strings (of the proper size) can be translated to elliptic curve points, without any random padding needed. For example, with Curve25519, every 32-byte string is a valid elliptic curve point. Another curve like that is Curve448.

It’s also important to note that the padding does not need to be truly random. In the image above I show a padding that is simply a constantly increasing sequence of numbers: 1, 2, 3, … That’s enough to find a valid point.

# Putting everything together

We have seen how to map a message to a point and how ElGamal works, so now we have all the elements to write some working code. I’m choosing Python and the ECPy package to work with elliptic curves, which you can install with pip install ecpy.

import random
from ecpy.curves import Curve, Point

def message_to_point(curve: Curve, message: bytes) -> Point:
# Number of bytes to represent a coordinate of a point
coordinate_size = curve.size // 8
# Minimum number of bytes for the padding. We need at least 1 byte so that
# we can try different values and find a valid point. We also add an extra
# byte as a delimiter between the message and the padding (see below)
# Maximum number of bytes that we can encode

if len(message) > max_message_size:
raise ValueError('Message too long')

# the same size as a point coordinate. Initially the padding is all 0

# Put a delimiter between the message and the padding, so that we can
# properly remove the padding at decrypt time

while True:
# Convert the padded message to an integer, which may or may not be a
# valid x-coordinate
# Calculate the corresponding y-coordinate (if it exists)
y = curve.y_recover(x)
if y is None:
# x was not a valid coordinate; increment the padding and try again
else:
# x was a valid coordinate; return the point (x, y)
return Point(x, y, curve)

def encrypt(public_key: Point, message: bytes) -> bytes:
curve = public_key.curve
# Map the message to an elliptic curve point
message_point = message_to_point(curve, message)
# Generate a randon number
seed = random.randrange(0, curve.field)
# Calculate c1 and c2 according to the ElGamal algorithm
c1 = seed * curve.generator
c2 = seed * public_key + message_point
# Encode c1 and c2 and return them
return bytes(curve.encode_point(c1) + curve.encode_point(c2))

def point_to_message(point: Point) -> bytes:
# Number of bytes to represent a coordinate of a point
coordinate_size = curve.size // 8
# Convert the x-coordinate of the point to a byte string
# Remove the padding and return the resulting message
return message

def decrypt(curve: Curve, secret_key: int, ciphertext: bytes) -> bytes:
# Decode c1 and c2 and convert them to elliptic curve points
c1_bytes = ciphertext[:len(ciphertext) // 2]
c2_bytes = ciphertext[len(ciphertext) // 2:]
c1 = curve.decode_point(c1_bytes)
c2 = curve.decode_point(c2_bytes)

# Calculate the message point according to the ElGamal algorithm
message_point = c2 - secret_key * c1
# Convert the message point to a message and return it
return point_to_message(message_point)


And here is an usage example:

curve = Curve.get_curve('secp384r1')

secret_key = 0x123456789abcdef
public_key = secret_key * curve.generator

message = 'hello'
print('  Message:', message)

encrypted = encrypt(public_key, message.encode('utf-8'))
print('Encrypted:', encrypted.hex())

decrypted = decrypt(curve, secret_key, encrypted).decode('utf-8')
print('Decrypted:', decrypted)


Which produces the following output:

  Message: hello
Encrypted: 04fa333c6a03994c5bce4627de4447c5cdd358415f8db2745b67836932a0d5e81f19...
Decrypted: hello


# Some considerations on padding and security

It’s important to note that padding is a very delicate problem in cryptography. There exist many padding schemes, and not all of them are secure. The padding scheme that I wrote in this article was just for demonstration purposes and may not be the most secure, so don’t use it in production systems. Take a look at OAEP if you’re looking for a modern and secure padding scheme.

Another thing to note is that the decryption method that I wrote does not check if the decryption was successful. If you try to decrypt an invalid ciphertext, or use the wrong key, you won’t get an error but instead a random result, which is not desiderable. A good padding scheme like OAEP will instead throw an error if decryption was unsuccessful.

(Receiving an error when decryption is not successful is very important due to the fact that schemes like ElGamal are malleable. Check out my post about authenticated encryption for examples and details about why this is important.)

# Cost of elliptic curve encryption

With Elliptic Curve ElGamal, if we are using an n-bit elliptic curve, we can encrypt messages that are at most n-bit long (actually less than that, if we’re using padding), and the output is at least 2n-bit long (if the resulting points $C_1$ and $C_2$ are encoded using point compression). This means that encryption using Elliptic Curve ElGamal doubles the size of the data that we want to encrypt. It also requires a fair amount of compute resources, because it involves a random number generation and 2 point multiplications.

In short, Elliptic Curve ElGamal is expensive both in terms of space and in terms of time and compute power, and this makes it unattractive in applications like TLS or general purpose encryption.

So what can we use Elliptic Curve ElGamal for? We can use it to encrypt symmetric keys, such as AES keys or ChaCha20 keys, and then use these symmetric keys to encrypt our arbitrary data. Symmetric keys are relatively short (ranging from 128 to 256 bits nowadays), so they can be encrypted with one round of Elliptic Curve ElGamal with most curves. It’s worth noting that this is the same approach that we use with RSA encryption: for most applications, we don’t use RSA to encrypt data directly, but rather we use RSA to encrypt symmetric keys which are later used for encrypting data.

These are the reason why schemes like Elliptic Curve ElGamal, or other methods of encryption with elliptic curves, are not used in practice:

• elliptic curve encryption is more expensive than hybrid encryption;
• hybrid encryption scales better and is more performant;
• elliptic curve key exchange is simpler and has fewer pitfalls than encryption.

In conclusion, there are no practical benefits from elliptic curve encryption compared to hybrid encryption with key agreement, and that’s why we don’t use it. However, the idea that elliptic curves cannot be used for encryption is a myth, and I hope this article will help clarify that confusion.