Ellipse-based Email Encryption

madlinguist writes: "Researchers connected with Stanford's Applied Crypto Group have developed a new method of identity-based encryption from spending too much time with ellipses. Named after two of the researchers, the Boneh-Franklin project was presented at Crypto 2001, where these researchers encouraged the crypto community to crack their open-source system. Best of all, the project's homepage allows you to try it on your own email address."

Comments

It has nothing to do with ellipses

[SIGFPE]

It uses elliptic curve crypto. It has nothing to do with ellipses. Elliptic curves are not ellipses and have absolutely nothing to do with ellipses. OK - they do have a historical connection with ellipses because elliptic curves arise out of the study of elliptic functions and elliptic functions can be used to find the arc-length of an ellipse. But really the use of the word 'elliptic' is just a historical accident.