RE: IEEE 802.11 security (public key encryption?)

["Nick Owen" <nowen () wikidsystems com>]

Visit http://www.ntru.com/cryptolab/index.htm for detailed info.  From
their web site: 

"We describe NTRU, a new public key cryptosystem. NTRU features
reasonably short, easily created keys, high speed, and low memory
requirements. NTRU encryption and decryption use a mixing system
suggested by polynomial algebra combined with a clustering principle
based on elementary probability theory. The security of the NTRU
cryptosystem comes from the interaction of the polynomial mixing system
with the independence of reduction modulo two relatively prime integers
p and q."

It has been published since 1998.  While there is a lot of comfort in
RSA in that it's so old the patents have expired, the speed and size
trade-offs are certainly worth it (depending on what "it" is, in our
case, it is).  There was a recent parameter attack published by Ntru
where decryption failures (about one in 1 trillion messages could reveal
the private key.  They have fixed that issue (choose better parameters,
essentially).  In our system, we could have regenerated private keys
easily anyway.  

I can't tell you anymore than what's on their website.  It's hard math,
but then all math was hard to me ;).

Nick

-----Original Message-----
From: N407ER [mailto:n407er () myrealbox com] 
Sent: Wednesday, July 23, 2003 9:45 PM
To: Nick Owen
Cc: security-basics () securityfocus com
Subject: Re: IEEE 802.11 security (public key encryption?)

Do you know more about how it works? I'm curious how something which 
sounds from your description to be really light-weight can be equivalent

to RSA.

Thanks.

Nick Owen wrote:
> Just one thought:  we have used a commercial encryption package from
Ntru
> for asymmetric encryption on wireless devices (we're using it for a
> two-factor authentication system). It is incredibly fast and
incredibly
> small.  The keys are 5k, our entire J2ME package is about 32k.  The
key
> strengths are equivalent to 1024 bit RSA.  On a J2ME phone, key gen
takes
> about 14 seconds, compared to 14 hours or so for ECC and 2+ days for
RSA
> (had to kill it).  We were using the Nextel 1st generation phones as
well,
> the newer ones are faster.  On a Blackberry or Palm, you hardly notice
the
> key gen or encryption, in fact, the network lag is the key drag.
>
> I know that Ntru did some implementation for a Wi-Fi project.  I think
that
> it would be a great solution for asymmetric encryption for Wi-fi, if
you had
> a particular need that warranted it.  My assumption is that it was not
> considered for WEP because it's a commercial product.
>
> Nick Owen
>
> --
> Nick Owen
> CEO
> WiKID Systems, Inc.
> 404-879-5227
> nowen () wikidsystems com
> http://www.wikidsystems.com
> The End of Passwords





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