Messages in this thread | | | Subject | Re: New possible source for cryptographic algorithm | Date | Fri, 15 Jan 1999 14:25:20 -0800 | From | J C Lawrence <> |
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On Fri, 15 Jan 1999 15:50:11 -0600 (EST) Russell Steffen<rsteffen@ia.net> wrote:
> On Fri, 15 Jan 1999, Billy Harvey wrote: >> A young lady in Ireland has developed a cryptographic algorithm >> that at first look provides significantly better speed than RSA. ... >> http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB19990114S0014
> As nice as a free, open source, patent-unencumbered replacement > for RSA would be, some caution is called for.
Read the comments at http://www.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=99/01/13/0931237&pid=0&threshold=0&mode=flat by William Whyte, a someone who claims to be one of the principles behind this new algorithm. Quoting quickly:
--<cut>-- By William Whyte on Wednesday January 13, @10:09AM
Hi,
This is a copy of a mail I sent to the UK Crypto mailing list earlier today about this story. Sorry in advance for the long sig, but I'm writing in an official capacity.
As far as the patents go, the algorithm is based on ideas of ours and so she and we would have to talk about legal issues before we made any move in that direction. Baltimore is very aware, though, of how hard it would actually be to make any money off a public-key algorithm, given that RSA and DSA/DH are more-or-less hard-wired into the standards, and given that (for understandable reasons) the Internet community is wary of crypto algorithms that have licensing issues associated with them.
William
=================================================
The algorithm that Sarah won the Young Scientist Competition with is based on work that Sarah did in Baltimore when she was here on a student work placement last March. We've been looking at algorithms based on 2x2 matrices for a while and gave her the idea to see what she could do with it.
The idea we were working on was to use 2x2 matrices with entries modulo n, n the product of 2 primes (ie an RSA number). The security is therefore exactly the same as the security of an RSA key with the same modulus. However, the encryption and decryption processes require only a small number of matrix multiplications rather than modular exponentiation, so both public-key operations (16 multiplications over the finite field) and private-key operations are as fast as a normal RSA private-key operation (17 multiplications). The downside is that both the key and the ciphertext are about eight times the length of the modulus, rather than more-or-less the length of the modulus as with RSA.
That was our idea, anyway. I haven't had time to look at Sarah's project in great detail so I don't know how far (or even whether) she's taken it beyond where we had it.
Sarah, by the way, is level-headed enough to know that new public-key algorithms only made you millions if you invented them in the Seventies. Her real problem is trying to stop the journalists talking up the stupid parts of the story while still emphasising that there's a real story in there.
Cheers,
William
--<cut>--
My name is not Bruce Schneier, but I have some background in the area, and per that the above appears plausible. My biggest fear and regret is that a group directly subject US Govt/NSA influence has a large say in what happens to the algorithm.
-- J C Lawrence Internet: claw@kanga.nu (Contractor) Internet: coder@kanga.nu ---------(*) Internet: claw@under.engr.sgi.com ...Honorary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...
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