OpenSSL Gets Cryptography Gift From Sun 217
Kataire writes "C|Net posted this story about how Sun Microsystems' has donated 'elliptic curve' encryption technology, (developed by Whitfield Diffie of Diffie-Hellman public key fame) to the OpenSSL project. This potentially means better encryption for lighter-weight systems such as PDAs."
Re:Good for more then PDA's (Score:1, Informative)
Huh? "Using the Quantum Computer to Break Elliptic Curve Cryptosystems" [nec.com]
Re:Good for more then PDA's (Score:5, Informative)
Wrong. OpenSSL != OpenSSH (Score:5, Informative)
Not quite.
OpenSSL is maintained by OpenSSL core members: Ralf S. Engelschall, Ben Laurie, Mark J. Cox, Dr. Stephen Henson, and others developers. [openssl.org]
OpenSSH was written by OpenBSD members (Theo de Raadt, Niels Provos, Markus Friedl, Dug Song, and others). OpenSSH uses OpenSSL as a cryptographic library source (it is highly optimized for many processors).
Re:Is this the same as featured before? (Score:3, Informative)
No... But there is a distributed project [nd.edu] out there working very hard to crack it - but so far elliptic curve encryption holds out...
By the way, Ars Technica has a team [teamvodkamartini.net] working hard on this project, and they I'm sure they'd like some help... ;-)
Re:NeXT, did NOT invent ECC. (Score:4, Informative)
Sorry, Ellipitic curve cryptography was invented independantly by Neal Koblitz, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Washington and Victor Miller who was then at IBM.
(Source [certicom.com])
Whitfield Diffie did NOT invent ECC (Score:5, Informative)
Elliptic curve cryptography was indepentantly
invented by Neal Koblitz [washington.edu], Professor of Mathematics at the University of Washington and Victor Miller who was then at IBM.
(Source [certicom.com])
Whitfield Diffie is Sun's chief security officer, and co-invented public-key cryptography.
wrong, wrong, _wrong_ ! (Score:3, Informative)
In fact, it has and can be easily shown that by solving "the factoring problem" (as it's oh-so-vulgarly put) or the discrete log problem of classical public key cryptosystems, one solves EC's. The problems are extensions of one another, and the solution to one is trivially deducible from the solution to another.
your statement was like saying "unlike Webster's Dictionary, the Oxford English Dictonary has no words in it" - pure and utter nonsense. gibberish.
All ECC's are (in boiled-down essence), is a Discrete Log problem on a cubic whose solutions are confined to a torus. (i.e. 'elliptic curve').
while it's true that the keysize needed for secure ECC is much, much smaller and increases much much more slowly than either DL (discrete log) or IF (integer factorization) [both of which are essentially exactly the same] systems, this has to do with the way the field is set up and how the keys correspond.
sun labs (Score:3, Informative)
Merkle invented public-key cryptography (too) (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, Ralph Merkle invented public-key cryptography (too). Merkle's article was SUBMITTED first, though the Diffie-Hellman article was PUBLISHED first while Merkle's was still going through the review process.
Not to disparage any of 'em. Merkle and Diffie & Hellman both invented it separately.
And for you people who follow Nanotech and/or Cryonics, yes it's THAT Ralph Merkle (who didn't invent either cryonics or nanotech, though he does much great work to advance them).
Re:BSD?? (Score:2, Informative)