RSA replacement by Irish girl

[Ian D. Goodyer]

At 07:27 AM 15-01-99 +0800, Nathan Kennedy wrote:
>
>> Is there an URL for her idea, or (better :-) her code?

>From the UKCrypto list that I administer.  It is all that I have heard. I
hope that it is useful and that the cross posting is forgiven for those
that subscribe to both lists.

ian

>From: William Whyte <wwhyte at baltimore.ie>
>To: "'ukcrypto at maillist.ox.ac.uk'" <ukcrypto at maillist.ox.ac.uk>
>Cc: "'Michael Purser'" <michael at baltimore.ie>
>Subject: RE: IrishCrypto
>Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1999 10:00:37 -0000
>Organization: Baltimore Technologies
>X-Mailer: Microsoft Internet E-mail/MAPI - 8.0.0.4211
>Sender: owner-ukcrypto at maillist.ox.ac.uk
>Reply-To: ukcrypto at maillist.ox.ac.uk
>
>On Wednesday, January 13, 1999 8:08 AM, David Parkinson
[SMTP:dparkins at alien.bt.co.uk] wrote:
>> >From the front page of today's Times <www.the-times.co.uk>
>> As usual (technically) content free.  Anyone know any
>> technical details?
>
>Yes, I do. It's based on work that Sarah did in Baltimore when
>she was here on a student work placement last March. We've been
>looking at algorithms based on 2x2 matrices for a while and
>gave her the idea to see what she could do with it.
>
>The idea we were working on was to use 2x2 matrices with entries
>modulo n, n the product of 2 primes (ie an RSA number). The 
>security is therefore exactly the same as the security of an RSA key with
>the same modulus. However, the encryption and decryption processes 
>require only a small number of matrix multiplications rather than
>modular exponentiation, so both public-key operations (16 multiplications 
>over the finite field) and private-key operations are as fast as a
>normal RSA private-key operation (17 multiplications). The downside
>is that both the key and the ciphertext are about eight times the
>length of the modulus, rather than more-or-less the length of the
>modulus as with RSA.
>
>That was our idea, anyway. I haven't had time to look at Sarah's
>project in great detail so I don't know how far (or even whether)
>she's taken it beyond where we had it.
>
>Sarah, by the way, is level-headed enough to know that new public-key
>algorithms only made you millions if you invented them in the Seventies.
>Her real problem is trying to stop the journalists talking up the
>stupid parts of the story while still emphasising that there's a real
>story in there.
>
>Cheers,
>
>William
>
>=============================================================================
>
>William Whyte, Senior Cryptographer, Baltimore-Zergo 
>
>Zergo & Baltimore Technologies merge in $55m deal !
>The new company name will be "Baltimore"
>
>See Baltimore at Stands 235 & 425
>RSA Data Security Conference, 17-21 Jan '99
>
>
>Baltimore Ltd, IFSC House, International Financial Services Centre,
>Custom House Quay, Dublin 1, Ireland.
>Tel. +353 1 605 4399   Fax. +353 1 605 4388
>Email: info at baltimore.ie
>Website http://www.baltimoreinc.com/
>Baltimore - Global e-Security
>
>
>From: William Whyte <wwhyte at baltimore.ie>
>To: "'ukcrypto at maillist.ox.ac.uk'" <ukcrypto at maillist.ox.ac.uk>
>Subject: RE: IrishCrypto
>Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1999 11:26:27 -0000
>Organization: Baltimore Technologies
>X-Mailer: Microsoft Internet E-mail/MAPI - 8.0.0.4211
>Sender: owner-ukcrypto at maillist.ox.ac.uk
>Reply-To: ukcrypto at maillist.ox.ac.uk
>
>On Wednesday, January 13, 1999 10:01 AM, William Whyte
[SMTP:wwhyte at baltimore.ie] wrote:
>
>> That was our idea, anyway. I haven't had time to look at Sarah's
>> project in great detail so I don't know how far (or even whether)
>> she's taken it beyond where we had it.
>
>(replying to own mail... this way lies madness)
>
>In fact, Sarah made substantial contributions to the development of the
>algorithm, finding a way of trading off key generation time against
>encryption time and doing a lot of work on the proof of security. It's
>very impressive.
>
>William
>