U.S government to rely on Canadian cryptography

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20050302.gtcrypto0303/BNStory/Technology/

March 2, 2005
Globe and Mail Update

MISSISSAUGA, Ont., March 3 - Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC), an
efficient public key cryptosystem, will become the standard to protect
U.S. government communications. The U.S. National Security Agency
(NSA) presented its strategy and recommendations for securing U.S.  
government sensitive and unclassified communications, which included a
recommended set of advanced cryptography algorithms known as Suite B
for securing sensitive and unclassified data.

The only public key protocols included in Suite B are Elliptic Curve
Menezes-Qu-Vanstone (ECMQV) and Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman (ECDH)  
for key agreement and Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm
(ECDSA) for authentication. The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) for
data encryption and SHA for hashing are also included. All of the
Suite B algorithms are consistent with the National Institute of
Standards and Technology (NIST) publications.

ECC is a publicly available algorithm produced by Certicom, which
researched and developed ECC-based implementations and security for
the past 20 years.

Certicom Security Architecture, a modular set of security services,
software cryptographic providers (including a FIPS 140-2 Validated
cryptographic module), and board support packages, enables device
manufacturers and other government suppliers to easily add strong,
efficient cryptography that meets the NSA recommendations and NIST
publications.



_________________________________________
Bellua Cyber Security Asia 2005 -
http://www.bellua.com/bcs2005