From: InfoSec News (alertsinfosecnews.org)
Date: Fri Jul 17 2009 - 03:40:04 CDT

• Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ]

http://www.h-online.com/security/Encryption-with-elliptical-curves-scratched--/news/113753

The H Security
July 14, 2009

Researchers at the École Polytechnique Fédérale (EPFL) in Lausanne,
Switzerland, have succeeded in cracking 112-bit encryption based on
elliptical curves (ECCp-112). They calculated the secret key associated
with a public key by solving the Discrete Logarithm Problem (DLP) for
elliptical curves, which displays a complexity of 260 for the numbers
involved. The cracked ECC system is a set of parameters defined by the
secp112r1PDF standard. That puts it at the lower end of the
specifications for ECC encryption systems.

The computation required around half a year on the EPFL cluster,
consisting of some 200 PlayStation 3s that had already served to
calculate the MD5 collision for creating a fake SSL issuer certificate
from RapidSSL. The ECC code designed for the cell processor of the
PlayStation 3 was optimised several times during the computation period,
and the researchers say that, if the optimised code had been running
from the start, the computation would only have taken three and a half
months. The previous record was set in 2002, when a distributed cluster
consisting of around 10,000 PCs cracked an ECC key within 549 days. At
that time, researchers at Notre Dame University cracked an ECCp-109 key,
three bits shorter than the new record.

[...]

_______________________________________________
Attend Black Hat USA, July 25-30 in Las Vegas,
the world's premier technical event for ICT security experts.
Network with 4,000+ delegates from 50 nations.
Visit product displays by 30 top sponsors in
a relaxed setting. http://www.blackhat.com

• Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ]