A Short-List of Pairing-Friendly Curves Resistant to Special TNFS at the 128-Bit Security Level

There have been notable improvements in discrete logarithm computations in finite fields since 2015 and the introduction of the Tower Number Field Sieve algorithm (TNFS) for extension fields. The Special TNFS is very efficient in finite fields that are target groups of pairings on elliptic curves, where the characteristic is special (e.g. sparse). The key sizes for pairings should be increased, and alternative pairing-friendly curves can be considered. We revisit the Special variant of TNFS for pairing-friendly curves. In this case the characteristic is given by a polynomial of moderate degree (between 4 and 38) and tiny coefficients, evaluated at an integer (a seed). We present a polynomial selection with a new practical trade-off between degree and coefficient size. As a consequence, the security of curves computed by Barbulescu, El Mrabet and Ghammam in 2019 should be revised: we obtain a smaller estimated cost of STNFS for all curves except BLS12 and BN. To obtain TNFS-secure curves, we reconsider the Brezing–Weng generic construction of families of pairing-friendly curves and estimate the cost of our new Special TNFS algorithm for these curves. This improves on the work of Fotiadis and Konstantinou, Fotiadis and Martindale, and Barbulescu, El Mrabet and Ghammam. We obtain a short-list of interesting families of curves that are resistant to the Special TNFS algorithm, of embedding degrees 10 to 16 for the 128-bit security level. We conclude that at the 128-bit security level, BLS-12 and Fotiadis–Konstantinou–Martindale curves with \(k=12\) over a 440 to 448-bit prime field seem to be the best choice for pairing efficiency. We also give hints at the 192-bit security level.