Cringely Gives KnowNow Some Unbelievable Free Press... (fwd)

[bear]

On Tue, 26 Feb 2002, Arnold G. Reinhold wrote:

>>I predict that Elliptic-Curve systems are about to become more
>>popular.
>>
>
>I'm not completely comfortable with Elliptic-Curve systems. The
>mathematics is relatively young and has seen a lot of progress.

Right.  I'm not very comfortable with Elliptic-Curve yet, either.
I haven't been able to work out exactly how, but I have a gut
feeling that there may be some translation or transformation of
the Elliptic-Curve problem that simplifies to integer factoring,
and as a result I'm not comfortable with EC key lengths shorter
than factorable numbers. However, I'm just a hobby mathematician.
I'm going to let the real mathematicians pound on it for a decade
or so and see what they come up with.

>If we are going to have to upgrade OpenPGP standards in light of the
>Bernstein paper, I would suggest a standard that combines RSA, EC
>and, if possible, a third PK system whose algorithm is based on an
>apparently independent problem.

This is probably a good idea - but independent keys for those
systems are going to make the keys *long*. Still, disk space is
cheap now, so yeah, that's probably the way to go.

Isn't Elliptic-Curve patent-encumbered?


				Bear


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