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Mitsubishi Electric's Encryption Technology Adopted as W-CDMA Standard
February 1, 2000 (TOKYO) -- Mitsubishi Electric Corp. said its "MISTY" encryption technology was adopted as a standard encryption method for the W-CDMA third-generation mobile communication system.
The company said it is the first time for an encryption technology developed in Japan to be adopted as an international standard.
MISTY was adopted by the "3GPP Third Generation Partnership Project" at 3gpp.org, which studies W-CDMA standards. SA-WG3, an encryption analyst group, reportedly studied various kinds of encryption technologies and selected MISTY as the one that satisfied the following conditions: (1) it can be incorporated in a phone as hardware, (2) its encryption algorithm is designed simpler and (3) from a security prospective, it is expected to have a life longer than 10 years.
Mitsubishi Electric started MISTY's customization work for W-CDMA in July 1999, and completed its development before December 1999, after having security tests. The technology has been adopted using the name of "KASUMI." It is expected to be authorized as GPP's encryption standard in the first half of this year, and will be an ITU recommendation.
MISTY is a public key encryption algorithm that Mitsubishi developed in 1995. It is a 64-bit block code that has a 128-bit encryption key. The company believes that MISTY's adoption was also supported for the following two reasons: the currently well-known deciphering methods cannot be applied to it, and it has kept a good track record as the company has already been providing security products using MISTY. Mitsubishi Electric explained about why MISTY was adopted, saying, "It can process at a data transfer speed as high as 2Mbps, be lightly packed in less than 10k gates and is designed for security, which is evaluated high."
Being authorized as a W-CDMA standard, KASUMI is expected to be equipped in NTT DoCoMo Inc.'s W-CDMA-based cellular phone. It is also expected to be incorporated in W-CDMA-compliant cellular phones in various countries.
Mitsubishi Electric is planning to develop business of as much as 10 billion yen through building electronic authentication systems and settlement systems using MISTY. (104.55 yen = US$1) As MISTY was adopted as a standard for the next generation mobile phones, the company will expand its revenues in these businesses. In addition, targeting other mobile phone makers, it is thinking of selling KASUMI development tools and LSIs for mobile phones that incorporate KASUMI.
(BizTech News Dept.)
Brian H. |
