NSA Turns To Commercial Software For Encryption

Roland Piquepaille writes "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 code. "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. 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." This summary includes the NIST guidelines for public key sizes and contains more details and links about the ECC technology. Since the announcement, Canadian Press reports that Certicom's shares more than doubled in Toronto."

Comments

Privatization

[mr100percent]

Oh come on, I know Bush's administration is all for privatization and turning to the private sector and all, but this?

The NSA's job is to make secure codes for government use, and break other people's codes. So they licensed someone else's code, but why are they announcing it for intra-government use? The obvious question is, Can't they roll their own?

Then again, I'm sure this is just spin, the reality SHOULD be much different. Or else someone should just be living in a van down by the river.

Huh?

[nepheles]

How is this remarkable? The NSA picks a proprietary solution where there is not even an Open-Source competitor. Surprise, surprise. I don't mean to troll -- but can somebody explain how this is interesting?