Fwd: ECC - how does it compare

[Hardeep Singh]

Hi All

Thanks for your thoughts. I was also looking forward to your comments
on what NSA is saying. For one, they claim RSA is "old" even with
longer keys. Why are they making a case for ECC. Is it easier to
crack.

Another thing I could think of us that ECC key generation is like a
one-way hash. If you input the same password, given the same curve,
the key generated will always be the same. So, basically, there is no
randomness involved in key generation. Doesnt that make ECC more prone
to dictionary attacks?

Regards
Hardeep

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Hardeep Singh <hs2412 at gmail.com>
Date: Oct 29, 2007 11:05 PM
Subject: ECC - how does it compare
To: gnupg-users at gnupg.org


Hi All

I recently looked at software called 'seccure' which is available for
linux. Its a tool for public key encryption using ECC rather than
prime number factoring.

http://www.nsa.gov/ia/industry/crypto_elliptic_curve.cfm

Here NSA is making a case for ECC.

One advantage that does seem to exist is that there is no need to
persistently store any part of the key - so the threat of someone
meddling with your key on the pen drive seems to be removed.

What do you all think about this?  Should we start building an ECC WOT? :-)

Regards
Hardeep Singh


-- 
Hardeep Singh