From: Sally Khudairi (info@zotgroup.com)
Date: Thu Apr 13 2000 - 06:08:06 PDT
For Immediate Release:
Contact:
ZOT Group (US Press Contact)
B.K. DeLong
bkdelong@zotgroup.com
+1.617.642.7149
4K Associates (Europe)
Robert Harley
Robert@4K-Associates.com
+33.1.3963.5157
4K Associates (US)
Rohit Khare
Rohit@4K-Associates.com
+1.626.806.7574
Biggest Public-key Cryptography Crack Ever
Worldwide Calculation Solves 109-bit Elliptic Curve Challenge
PARIS -- 13th April 2000 -- Irish mathematician Robert Harley and three
colleagues at INRIA, the French National Institute for Research in
Computer Science and Control, announced the solution to the most
difficult public key cryptographic challenge ever solved after a huge
calculation on close to 10000 computers throughout the Internet. The
challenge, called ECC2K-108, was set by Canadian cryptographic company
Certicom in 1997 to encourage researchers to test the security of
cryptography based on elliptic curves.
This extraordinary achievement demonstrates the high level of security
that ECC (elliptic-curve cryptography) can offer with much shorter
keys than RSA. It also highlights the relative weakness of some
curves with special properties and confirms that for optimal security
one should pick random curves with no special characteristics.
ORGANIZATION OF THE PROJECT
Robert Harley and colleagues, Damien Doligez, Daniel de Rauglaudre and
Xavier Leroy, found the 109-bit cryptographic key after four months of
computation distributed on 9500 computers with the help of 1300
volunteers in 40 countries. Two thirds of the computation were done
on Unix workstations and one third on Windows PCs. On a single 450
MHz machine the computation would have taken 500 years.
The project, called ECDL, was organized into teams which used
open-source software developed by Harley to calculate more than two
million billion points on a particular type of elliptic curve, called
a Koblitz curve by Certicom. Among these points, the teams discovered
"distinguished" points and sent them to an AlphaServer at INRIA where
a Web site allowed participants to follow the computation's progress
in real-time. After two million distinguished points had been
collected, a final phase of processing was able to extract the
solution.
The participants also stayed in constant communication via the Web
site and a good-humoured competition quickly developed among them.
The most productive people were: Paul Bourke at Swinburne Astrophysics
and Supercomputing in Australia, Rajit Manohar at Cornell Computer
Systems Laboratory, Bruno Verlyck and Philippe Deschamp at INRIA,
Vincent Goffin with AT&T, Bernd Leibing at Ulm University in Germany,
Mark Brown with Rhythm and Hues Studios in Los Angeles.
Of the US$10000 prize money offered by Certicom, $8000 will be donated
to the Apache Software Foundation to support development of the Apache
open-source Web server software package. The remaining $2000 will go
to two participants who found crucial distinguished points used in
computing the solution: Asa Reed with Colorado Group and a person who
prefers to remain anonymous.
IMPLICATIONS
Arjen Lenstra, vice president at Citibank's Corporate Technology
Office in New York and a participant in the project, noted "The amount
of computation we did is more than what is needed to crack a
secret-key system like DES and enough to crack a public-key system
like RSA of at least 600 bits".
Harley remarked "Even so, it was only about one tenth of what should
normally be required for a 109-bit curve. That's because Certicom
chose a particular curve with some useful properties but we used those
same properties to speed up our attack". He went on to say "This
underlines the danger in adopting particular curves and the need to
pick random ones with no special characteristics. I'm concerned about
Koblitz curves and complex-multiplication curves, which some people
advocate using in order to avoid the point-counting problem".
François Morain, Professor of Computer Science at École Polytechnique,
explained: "To use a curve for ECC one first has to calculate the
number of points on it, which is quite a difficult task. To improve
security one should use arbitrary curves picked at random and change
them frequently, but currently most cryptosystems use fixed curves
chosen to have particular properties which make it easy to
compute the cardinality. These very properties could one day endanger
them, as happened with super-singular curves. There have been
dramatic improvements in point-counting algorithms and good
implementations are now becoming available. Recent progress should
soon undermine any remaining argument in favour of special curves".
CONCLUSION
This large-scale project and others of its kind play a vital role by
putting theoretical assessments of security to the test of experiment.
INRIA's de Rauglaudre drew the analogy "Just as crash-tests by automobile
manufacturers contribute to the safety of cars, this experiment helps
improve cryptosystems currently being deployed to secure electronic
communications and commerce."
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
The ECDL project:
http://cristal.inria.fr/~harley/ecdl/
The Certicom ECC Challenge:
http://www.certicom.com/chal/
4K Associates
http://www.4K-Associates.com/
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