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To: quartersawyer who wrote (15477)	1/17/2000 11:51:00 PM
From: Eric L	Respond to of 54805

B. Nadelson, << please comment on the following ... "cryptosensitive operations (signing and decrypting) can be many times faster using ECC than using RSA, ECC is more appropriate for use in secure devices such as smart cards and wireless devices with constrained computational power" ... etc. >> So sayeth Certicom and so they have been saying for some time. And some people seem to be listening. Ouch! Cryptography makes my neck ache. <g> This weekend I took a rain check on a related question posed by "calypso" (who I noticed you have conversed with on the CIC thread) on the smart card thread: 127.0.0.1:3456/SI/~wsapi/investor/reply-12580378 First, let me say that "cryptosensitive operations (signing and decrypting) can be many times faster using ECC than using RSA" is definitely an accurate statement, or so I am told by expert cryptologists working in the smart card industry. Conversely however the new generation of 32-bit RISC smart card chips (Atmel, ST, soon Infineon) appears to have adequate processing power to handle RSA encrypting, signing, wrapping, decrypting and key generation, and adequate storage area on EEPROM. Price of these chips when commercially available in large quantities relative to an 8-bit chip (without a cryptographic coprocessor) with more limited storage capacity becomes one relevant issue. A second issue is that PKCS #13 (the Elliptic Curve Cryptography Standard) is still under development: rsasecurity.com In the link you provided to Certicom's site their is something I disagree with and that is the statement that "ECC smart cards would not require as much memory". Storing keys and multiple and large certificates as well as keys AND multiple applications and perhaps Java applets will a LOT of memory. Some of Certicoms "Conclusions" on the site you link possibly apply more to the smart cards of a year ago than the smart cards of one year from now. I'm high on Certicom and that other Canadian PKI provider Entrust but did you also notice this news from the world of PKI: "BALTIMORE BUYS U.S. CYBERTRUST FOR $150 MILLION" totaltele.com - Eric -