27-09-06 17:41
Age: 5 yrs

BY: GHOSAL, RAJA ; COLE, PETER

Public key cryptography systems are based on sound mathematical foundations that are designed to make the problem hard for an intruder to break into the system. The major approaches that since 1976 have withstood intruder attacks, are the discrete logarithm problem (as in D-H), and the integer factorisation problem as in RSA. The growing area of lightweight devices, such as mobile cell phones, PDA’s, palmtops, where memory, processing power, bandwidths are limited, are constrained in using public key cryptography systems, which are based on large key sizes. The larger key requires higher computation power. Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) is a newer approach, with a novelty of low key size for the user, and hard exponential time challenge for an intruder to break into the system. In ECC a 160 bits key, provides the same security as RSA 1024 bits key, thus lower computer power is required. The advantage of elliptic curve cryptosystems is the absence of subexponential time algorithms, for attack.

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