Crypto Column:

^{BY DR. SCOTT VANSTONE}

I’ve always considered myself fortunate to have one foot in the commercial sector and one in academia. Not a lot of mathematicians get that opportunity. But for three days at the ECC conference, my friends, colleagues and associates got a glimpse into my world. The only one of its kind, the Certicom ECC Conference offers a forum for discussing pure mathematics and real-world applications. The conference brings together some of the best mathematicians in the world with some of the most innovative entrepreneurs and business people to discuss elliptic curve cryptography and its real-world applications.

The first day of the conference kept true to this form. It began with a discussion on the use of ECC in digital rights management, a relatively new area that uses security to promote fair use rights for music, visual artwork, computer and video games, and movies. The day ended with attendees toasting one of the foremost mathematicians of our time, Dr. Gerhard Frey, who was awarded the Certicom ECC Visionary Award 2005 in recognition of his seminal contributions to the advancement of ECC. As Gerhard deftly illustrated, there is a reciprocal relationship between pure mathematics and real-world applications, and our many speakers illustrated this relationship.

As proponents of ECC, we are confident ECC will become the de facto public key scheme. This past spring the National Security Agency specified the use of ECC algorithms in its Suite B recommendations for securing classified and unclassified communications. Of all the validations one can receive, this has to be the most significant. Not only does Suite B set guidelines for protecting government communications, it greatly influences best practices in the commercial sector. When a friend of mine heard about this endorsement he phoned to announce that I should get a lifelong achievement award for perseverance. The twenty years of perseverance is paying off.

ECC is in every major standard in the world and ECDSA is one of the most widely used signing algorithms. ECC is deployed in numerous applications—digital postage marks, electronic payment systems, consumer electronics, anti-cloning and conditional access systems, and many others. The Federal Aviation Association uses ECC to secure communications between aircraft and control towers, Research In Motion built it into the Blackberry and ECC is found in the Digital Transmission Content Protection (DTCP) standard, which is used over Firewire to secure the digital link between consumer devices that transfer digital content. And the list of applications continues to grow as we anticipate ECC being used in epassports and sensors networks.

I would like to thank the speakers and all participants for contributing their time, knowledge and experience to make the conference a great success. I found it humbling and exhilarating to be surrounded by so many intelligent and accomplished people and I look forward to seeing you at the next Certicom ECC.