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SubjectRe: New possible source for cryptographic algorithm
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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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