Technology Review: Math Advances Raise the Prospect of an Internet Security Crisis

[Winehole23]

The encryption systems used to secure online bank accounts and keep critical communications private could be undone in just a few years, security researchers warned at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas yesterday. Breakthroughs in math research made in the past six months could underpin practical, fast ways to decode encrypted data that’s considered unbreakable today.


Alex Stamos, chief technology officer of the online security company Artemis, led a presentation describing how he and three other security researchers studied recent publications from the insular world of academic cryptopgraphy research, which covers trends in attacking common encryption schemes.




“Our conclusion is there is a small but definite chance that RSA and classic Diffie- man will not be usable for encryption purposes in four to five years,” said Stamos, referring to the two most commonly used encryption methods.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news...curity-crisis/

[TeyshaBlue]

lol Blackberry sitting pretty with ECC.

[Winehole23]

come again? I have no idea what you're talking about.

[TeyshaBlue]

Blackberry, who is struggling mightily for relevance, walks into a potential gold mine.

"Implementations of ECC were pioneered and patented by a company called Certicom that is now a subsidiary of the phone manufacturer BlackBerry. Although the U.S. government has purchased licenses that allow the use of ECC by itself and its contractors, other companies that want to use ECC will need to make expensive deals with Certicom to avoid lawsuits. In 2007 Certicom sued Sony for using ECC in software for BlueRay DVDs without licensing its patents. Sony initially attempted to have some patents invalidated in court, before settling out of court in 2009.

Stamos called on BlackBerry to change its policy regarding the Certicom patents, suggesting it could allow open use of them for SuiteB-based systems using ECC, but still make significant revenue from other use cases. “There’s not a company in the world that has the opportunity that BlackBerry has right now,” he said, adding that if RSA and Diffie- man were broken, the U.S. government would likely overturn Certicom’s patents in the national interest. “If the cryptopocalypse happens, those patents are not going to last."

[boutons_deux]

"use case"