According to eWEEK, the National Security Agency (NSA) has picked a commercial solution for its encryption technology needs instead on relying on its own proprietary codes.
In an extraordinary move, the National Security Agency has purchased a license for Certicom Corp.'s elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) system, and plans to make the technology a standard means of securing classified communications.
As part of the $25 million agreement, the NSA can grant sublicenses within a limited field of use. This most likely will include other government agencies, federal contractors and other parties that send sensitive data to the agency.
It is a premiere for NSA which initiated the deal.
Certicom officials said the agency approached the company about licensing Certicom's ECC intellectual property. ECC is a type of public-key cryptography that utilizes much smaller keys than other systems such as RSA. The technology is designed for use in constrained environments where memory and computing power are at a premium.
In the case of the NSA deal, the agency wanted to use a 512-bit key for the ECC system. This is the equivalent of an RSA key of 15,360 bits.
Here is a diagram showing the equivalencies between these keys (Credit: NIST).
Certicom provides tons on information about its ECC technology, including its history and a very detailed tutorial.
Since the announcement, Canadian Press reports that Certicom's shares doubled in Toronto.
Certicom Corp. stock more than doubled after the company announced it has sold the non-exclusive licensing rights to its encryption technology to the U.S. National Security Agency.
Certicom stock gained $1.67 to close at $3.13 on the Toronto stock market, the highest close since March 2002.
The NSA is following many other customers.
Certicom's data-scrambling technology is licensed to more than 300 customers including Texas Instruments, Palm, Research In Motion, Cisco Systems, Oracle and Motorola.
Sources: Dennis Fisher, eWEEK, October 24, 2003; Canadian Press, October 24, 2003; Certicom website
12:08:17 PM Permalink
|
|
