Proposed Wireless Encryption Method Cracked

rstory writes "ZDNet is reporting that "An encryption method widely expected to secure next-generation wireless phones and other devices succumbed to a brute-force collaborative effort to break it." The story is here." This particular ECC algorithm was brute-forced. Not major news, does nothing toward proving that brute force is the best method of attack on ECC codes and of course, your calls still aren't safe from eavesdropping since the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act requires that telco's build in eavesdropping capabilities for the government.

brute forced?

[oog_rocks]

well rc5-128 can be brute forced as well, but it's plenty secure. i don't get why they even make encryption standards lower than 64 bits.

not a big deal

[Signail11]

A single instance of the discrete logarithm problem defined in the subgroup of points on an eliptic curve over GF(2) modulo an irreducible polynomial has been broken by brute force. An incredible accomplishment really; Robert Harley describes it as the largest public key crypto crack ever and the largest distributed computation project using a nontrivially parallel algorithm. The details are fascinating, but probably only to someone interested in number theory and abstract algebra, especially how the collision search was made faster by exploiting the low class number of the overall group and how orbits of 218 points could be created using the unique Frobenius structure of the group. Nonetheless, the project is similar to a standard crack of the DES algorithm (ala d.net/Deep Crack). It doesn't expose a flaw in the eliptic curve algorithm, nor does it open the way to breaking the method used in wireless phones in a more efficient manner. Essentially, Harley's group obtained a practical data point in establishing the difficulty of breaking one ECDL problem; the Slashdot headline is very misleading. Besides, this same story was covered about a week ago on the front page, under a different "twist."