OpenSSL Gets Cryptography Gift From Sun

Kataire writes "C|Net posted this story about how Sun Microsystems' has donated 'elliptic curve' encryption technology, (developed by Whitfield Diffie of Diffie-Hellman public key fame) to the OpenSSL project. This potentially means better encryption for lighter-weight systems such as PDAs."

Comments

Offering from large companies

[phorm]

Has anybody noticed a trend lately of large corporations or companies making offers to the public source movements. Is this a play between them for notice, or are they finally starting to figure out that it's better to play nice with open source than fight against it?

Re:Great!

[Darkforge]

Actually, there is a real use for widespread heavy-duty crypto, even on a PDA: encrypted money tokens.

If strong encrypted money tokens were to be implemented on a wide scale for, say, Palm PocketPC, Zaurus, and maybe a special purpose StrongARM device, you could expect to see a cheap widespread secure electronic payment mechanism that you can use for micropayments.

Aside from the novelty of buying lunch with your PDA, this could be the next step towards truly secure electronic transfers. You can say goodbye to corporate privacy violations when you can pay for your online goods with secure anonymous electronic cash.

Imagine paying your peers in a P2P system for MP3s/OGGs/whatever. Providing fat bandwidth for P2P would be a potential money-maker, not merely a labor of love. Throw in an anonymizing protocol and you're selling MP3 bandwidth online securely and untraceably; the RIAA couldn't shut you down, because there'd be no way to figure out who you were.

That's the power of widespread strong crypto, especially in small devices.