Stefan Mileschin

A new form of encryption, which is supposed to be the next best thing when it comes to encoding, has been cracked by a team led by Fujutsu.

The team made up of Fujitsu, National Institute of Information and Communications Technology and Kyushu University managed a successful cryptanalysis of a 278-digit (923-bit)-long pairing-based cryptography.

Tragically for the standard, it is fast becoming the next best thing because it was estimated to take several hundred thousand years to break.

According to Fujutsu, the standard was pretty tricky to start with and really was impossible.

However the number crunchers started to think laterally and came up with a different way to approach the problem.

What they worked out was that pairing-based cryptography of this length was fragile and could actually be broken in just 148.2 days.

In a press release, Fujutsu said that as cryptanalytic techniques and computers become more advanced, cryptanalytic speed accelerates, and cryptographic security decreases.

Pairing-based cryptography had not advanced, so it was premature to evaluate its security against a new attack method.

The team used 21 personal computers with 252 cores in 148.2 days. The cryptanalysis is the equivalent to spoofing the authority of the information system administrator.

As a result, for the first time in the world Fujitsu proved that the cryptography of the parameter was vulnerable and could be broken in a realistic amount of time.

The key to solving the problem was a technique optimising parameter setting that uses computer algebra, a two dimensional search algorithm extended from linear search.

The team used more efficient programming techniques to work out an equation from shedloads of data, as well as the parallel programming technology.

While it gave the team a new world record of cryptanalysis, it also means the acquisition of valuable data that forms a technical foundation on which to estimate selection of secure encryption. Whatever that means. As is always the case, any press release created by PR professionals obfuscates rather than illumines.

http://news.techeye.net/security/fuj...ure-encryption