NSA Announces New Crypto Standards

Proaxiom writes "This week the NSA announced the new US government standard for key agreement and digital signatures, called Suite B. Suite B uses Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman (ECDH) and Elliptic Curve Menezes-Qu-Vanstone (ECMQV) for key agreement, and Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) for signature generation/verification. This shouldn't be too surprising given that the NSA licensed Certicom's EC patents for $25 million last year. ECMQV is patented by Certicom. ECDH and ECDSA appear to be generally unencumbered."

Comments

WTF?

[Kesh]

That's a helluva lot of acronyms. Talk about encoding!

Re:WTF?

[Kesh]

... I got first post and it got modded 5, Funny?

I need a life. n.n

Huh?

[FiReaNGeL]

Does this mean that we're more secure? Or our data? Or theirs? Or something? Does it means anything at all? Do we really exist? What will I eat for supper?

I JUST DON'T KNOW!

Re:Huh?

[bcmm]

The NSA is secure. You are not secure, the NSA ()\/\/|\|Z your computer, and possibly your mind. I exist, but I can't prove it. You might not exist, you might be a highly unlikely bug in Slashcode. My advice to you, if you exist, or even if you are just a bug, is to eat lots of cheese for supper, possibly in a pizza, unless you are lactose intolerant.

I hope life makes more sense now. I can hear digeredoo music.

I just re-read that. I need sleep.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

You should start a religion!

Wow...

[nuclear305]

"ECDH and ECDSA appear to be generally unencumbered."

Except for their names, of course...

Not unencumbered =(

[mg2]

All elliptical curve math, unfortunately, falls under Microsoft's patent on all things curvy or mildly resembling a circle. =\

Re:Not unencumbered =(

[LiquidCoooled]

I thought goatse had worldwide patent rights to anything resembling a cirle?

Surprising Announcement

[MrAsstastic]

"In a surprise announcement the RNC has announced it is bankrupt, but not everyone is going begging. Greenpeace, The United Negro College Fund, Amnesty International, and other charities announced *record* earnings this week. Due mostly to large, anonymous donations." NO MORE SECRETS

I suppose I have to get rid of enigma now

[multi-flavor-geek]

And I was just getting the kinks out of a usb powered enigma machine to provide encryption for online banking. I mean damn? Who could ever crack enigma?

HAH!

[Tufriast]

1. Steal half-broken encryption process that has an impossibly hard name to say. 2. ???? 3. Profit!

Certicom is a Canuckistani company...

[ABeowulfCluster]

And now that Soviet Canuckistan is controlling all the NSA computers, I'd like to be the first to say

'PWNED!!"

Someone always says it

[cryptor3]

Perhaps does the gov't know of a "quick" way to do large prime factorization unknown to the rest of us? With RSA resting so heavily on big primes, it would be uniquely vulnerable to something like a new way to do factorization.

Yeah I can do large prime factorization in my head. But I'm sure as hell not telling anyone else how to do it.

New Encryption:

[tommyth]

The new standard is 129 bit encryption. Takes twice as long to crack.

Re:Good encryption?

[Speare]

the NSA has a proven track record of giving GOOD encryption advice in their public announcements

[tinfoil] But that's just what they want us to believe... [/tinfoil]

Re:ECMQV broken

[STrinity]

This is nothing compared to the story last year about the NSA tracking email to identify a terror cell in Britain. An astonishing number of Slashdot users were shocked to discover that the National Security Agency spies on people.