NSA specifies elliptic-curve crypto for security applications
By Loring Wirbel
EE Times
03, 2005 (10:11 H EST)
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — The National Security Agency has specified
elliptic-curve cryptography (ECC) for a wide range of key agreement
and digital signature tasks.
The decision boosts the fortunes of ECC originator Certicom Corp.
(Missisauga, Ontario). The announcement follows NSA's licensing of Certicom
algorithms last fall for a program in which NSA will actively work with
suppliers of secure modules for government applications.
The spy agency's support of ECC protocols represents an interesting turn in
NSA's continued analysis of private- and public-key crypto systems.
Previously, NSA had opposed wide industry use of public-key crypto. The
agency influenced the design of the original private-key Data Encryption
Standard, and tried to push companies toward use of the agency-developed
Clipper/Capstone crypto-chip program.
In the mid-1990s, NSA in effect threw in the towel, maintaining a hands-off
approach to the development of the Advanced Encryption Standard while
acknowledging that widespread use of public-key cryptosystems would be
acceptable.
Last October, the agency referred to ECC as one of the few public-key
systems that could meet equivalent security standards to the private-key
AES.
NSA (Fort Meade, Md.) is recommending a series of algorithms called "Suite
B" for securing sensitive and unclassified data. Suite B includes Elliptic-
Curve Menezes-Qu-Vanstone and Elliptic-Curve Diffie-Hellman for key
agreement, along with the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm for
digital signatures.
AES and Secure Hashing Algorithm also are included in Suite B.
http://www.eet.com/sys/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleId=60404977
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