FWD: SCIENTISTS PROPOSE NEW ENCRYPTION SCHEME

SCIENTISTS PROPOSE NEW ENCRYPTION SCHEME
Two scientists at the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose,
Calif.  have developed a new approach to public key cryptography
based on mathematical constructs called lattices.  The system
would be based on a particular set of hidden hyperplanes that
constitute the private key and a method of generating points near
one of those hyperplanes for the public key.  The security of the
system rests on the computational difficulty of finding the
"unique" shortest line segment (or vector) that connects any two
points in a given lattice -- a task that's fairly easy in two or
three dimensions, but much more difficult in a 100-dimensional
lattice.  The researchers are working to turn their theory into a
marketable product, and see applications in creating digital
signatures and other security and authentication schemes.
(Science News 5 Jul 97)

Edgar W. Swank   <EdgarSwank@Juno.com>
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Edgar W. Swank   <cryoprez@jps.net>
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> SCIENTISTS PROPOSE NEW ENCRYPTION SCHEME
> Two scientists at the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose,
> Calif.  have developed a new approach to public key cryptography
> based on mathematical constructs called lattices.  The system
> would be based on a particular set of hidden hyperplanes that
> constitute the private key and a method of generating points near
> one of those hyperplanes for the public key.  

This is old(ish) news. This was the Cynthia Dwork paper, but 
unfortunately the keysizes for the predictably secure version of the 
cryptosystem are unmanageably large, in the smaller key system there is a 
probablility of a bit decrypting wrongly (either a 0 as a 1 or the other 
way round, I can`t remember)...

I would recommend getting a copy of the paper to anyone interested, it is 
really interesting stuff even if it is only theory.

        Datacomms Technologies data security
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