For calculating a result of a modular multiplication with long operands, at least the multiplicand is divided into at least three shorter portions. Using the three shorter portions of the multiplicand, the multiplier and the modulus, a modular multiplication is performed within a cryptographic calculation, wherein the portions of the multiplicand, the multiplier and the modulus are parameters of the cryptographic calculation. The calculation is performed sequentially using the portions of the multiplicand and using an intermediate result obtained in a previous calculation, until all portions of the multiplicand are processed, to obtain the final result of the modular multiplication. The calculation of an intermediate result is performed using a multiplication addition operation, in which MMD operations and updating operations are performed sequentially, and short auxiliary registers and short result registers are used.