[18454] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: ECC patents?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Alexander Klimov)
Wed Sep 14 11:44:27 2005
X-Original-To: cryptography@metzdowd.com
X-Original-To: cryptography@metzdowd.com
Date: Wed, 14 Sep 2005 12:18:14 +0300 (IDT)
From: Alexander Klimov <alserkli@inbox.ru>
To: cryptography@metzdowd.com
In-Reply-To: <p06230969bf4c9792939e@[10.20.30.249]>
On Tue, 13 Sep 2005, Paul Hoffman wrote:
> At 9:32 AM -0700 9/12/05, James A. Donald wrote:
> >It has been a long time, and no one has paid out
> >money on an ECC patent yet.
>
> That's pretty bold statement that folks at Certicom might disagree
> with, even before
> <http://www1.ietf.org/proceedings_new/04nov/slides/saag-2/sld1.htm>.
http://www1.ietf.org/proceedings_new/04nov/slides/saag-2/sld9.htm:
What is Really Covered
o The use of elliptic curves defined over GF(p) where p is a prime
number greater than 2^255 when the product satisfies the Field of
Use conditions
o Both compressed and uncompressed point implementations
o Use of elliptic curve MQV and ECDSA under the above conditions
This hints that indeed only some particular curves are patented.
Grepping -list_curves of the new openssl (0.9.8) which has a list of
curves from SECG, WTLS, NIST, and X9.62 gives not that much:
secp256k1 : SECG curve over a 256 bit prime field
secp384r1 : NIST/SECG curve over a 384 bit prime field
secp521r1 : NIST/SECG curve over a 521 bit prime field
prime256v1: X9.62/SECG curve over a 256 bit prime field
Alternatively, this coverage can be interpreted that NSA is not
interested in curves which provide less security than 128-bit AES.
Any idea, which alternative is true?
--
Regards,
ASK
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