Re: elliptic-curve cryptography, are we ready?

[Valdis.Kletnieks () vt edu]

On Wed, 15 Aug 2007 08:29:05 EDT, Marc Evans said:
> I have been reading more and more lately about current PKI techniques 
> nearing their end of life, and that elliptic-curve cryptography (ECC) is a 
> likely replacement. Here is one such article on the topic:
>
>      http://www.gcn.com/print/26_20/44801-1.html
>
> That said, I am not finding much in the area of public implementations and 
> scrutiny. Can anyone shed any light on the subject?

Well, the MD5 hash is well into "stick a fork in it, it's done" status, and
people should be migrating to SHA-n based code.  The biggest problem with
RSA is that we'll probably have to move from 1K-bit keys to 2K-bit keys
sometime in the next decade.

Elliptic curves are an interesting replacement mostly in some niches, most
notably for smart cards or other places where power and/or computrons are a
scarce resource.  On laptops and higher, it doesn't buy you any additional
security - the only reason to move in *that* direction is if your organization
is deploying something to secure both smart-card class and laptop-class devices
with one system.

Phrased differently: The smart card can't handle RSA with 2048 bit keys, but
*can* do an ECC with 256 bit keys, so we'll do it that way across the board.

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