Interesting People mailing list archives
IP: more Re: Elliptic Curve 97-bit Challenge Broken
From: David Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
Date: Tue, 28 Sep 1999 16:56:28 -0400
Date: Tue, 28 Sep 1999 13:41:51 -0700 To: farber () cis upenn edu From: Rohit Khare <rohit () uci edu> Subject: Re: IP: Elliptic Curve 97-bit Challenge Broken Cc: Robert.Harley () inria fr Rob Harley and I are part of 4K Associates, an Internet standards-strategy consultancy,. Our own original US press release added a few more personal opinions... From: http://www.4K-Associates.com/Press"Understanding the bounds of ECC's strength grows more urgent as it is written into more and more Internet standards," noted Rohit Khare, a principal of the 4K Associates standards-strategy consultancy and colleague of Mr. Harley. "For example, our recent analysis of the WAP [Wireless Application Protocol] suite agreed that RSA is too power-hungry for hand-held devices, but cautioned that there are pitfalls in blindly incorporating ECC into existing protocols."According to Dr. Robert Zuccherato, senior cryptographer at Entrust Technologies Inc., "Successful efforts like this one, while demonstrating the weakness in practice of short keys, also confirm the security level achieved by the 160-bit or longer keys used in commercial elliptic-curve cryptosystems." He added that "Entrust Technologies was pleased to provide resources to assist in this project."Khare observed that a determined adversary such as a government agency or a corporation with substantial computing resources would make short work of a 97-bit ECC key or indeed the 109-bit key in the next Certicom problem."We are now close to the 112-bit limitation that many Western governments impose on exportable ECC software via the Wassenaar Agreement." said Mr. Harley. "Our repeated successes are demonstrating that such short keys offer a wholly inadequate level of security. These export restrictions, while claimed to be in the public interest, in fact facilitate industrial espionage, hinder global competition and limit people's right to privacy."
Current thread:
- IP: more Re: Elliptic Curve 97-bit Challenge Broken David Farber (Sep 28)