NODE 22b2e751Re: Elliptic Curve Public Key Crypto available
Andrew Loewenstern <andrew_loewenstern@il.us.swissbank.com>Tue, 12 Sep 95 10:03:01 PDT
> Previous to the availabilty of 100 MHz processors this method of
> public key crypto was ridculously slow. The only versions were
> laboratory curiosities implemented in ASIC hardware. Code, if it
> exists, is not in the public domain.
What about NeXT's Fast Elliptic Encryption (FEE)? Their research guy,
Richard Crandall, came up with major speedups to elliptic curve encryption.
In fact, there was a simple cryptosystem that shipped as a demo with NeXTSTEP
2.0. What was most interesting about this system was that it didn't store
any keys anywhere; your public/private key pair was generated _on the fly_
from your passphrase every time you encrypted or decrypted....on a 25mhz
68040 too... and it was fast! It wasn't that great of an implementation
(you _really_ need a lot of bits of entropy in that passphrase, and you can't
change your passphrase without changing your PK), but it shows how fast
NeXT's speedups are. And this was in 1990...
I'm not sure if the speedups are patented, but you could try a literature
search. If it really is fast then it could mean good things for servers that
need to do a lot of enrcyption/decrption for interaction with clients.
andrew
NODE 682dcab4Re: Elliptic Curve Public Key Crypto available
Mike Rosing <cryptech@Mars.mcs.com>Tue, 12 Sep 95 17:34:40 PDT
On Tue, 12 Sep 1995, Andrew Loewenstern wrote:
> What about NeXT's Fast Elliptic Encryption (FEE)? Their research guy,
> Richard Crandall, came up with major speedups to elliptic curve encryption.
> In fact, there was a simple cryptosystem that shipped as a demo with NeXTSTEP
> 2.0. What was most interesting about this system was that it didn't store
> any keys anywhere; your public/private key pair was generated _on the fly_
> from your passphrase every time you encrypted or decrypted....on a 25mhz
> 68040 too... and it was fast! It wasn't that great of an implementation
> (you _really_ need a lot of bits of entropy in that passphrase, and you can't
> change your passphrase without changing your PK), but it shows how fast
> NeXT's speedups are. And this was in 1990...
>
> I'm not sure if the speedups are patented, but you could try a literature
> search. If it really is fast then it could mean good things for servers that
> need to do a lot of enrcyption/decrption for interaction with clients.
Yes, the speedups are patented. Their system relied on very specific
curves with very specific properties. I purposly avoided coding up their
method because of that. Their method is described in patent #5,159,632
dated Oct 27, 1992 and it uses a different equation (supersingular
version) than what I implemented. The price is slower speed, but with
100 MHz processors you won't notice.
Patience, persistence, truth,
Dr. mike