The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Oct. 31, 1995
Filed:
Dec. 14, 1993
Richard E Crandall, Portland, OR (US);
Next Computer, Inc., Redwood City, CA (US);
Abstract
The present invention is an elliptic curve cryptosystem that uses elliptic curves defined over finite fields comprised of special classes of numbers. Special fast classes of numbers are used to optimize the modulo arithmetic required in the enciphering and deciphering process. The class of numbers used in the present invention is generally described by the form 2.sup.q -C where C is an odd number and is relatively small, for example, no longer than the length of a computer word (16-32 bits). When a number is of this form, modulo arithmetic can be accomplished using shifts and adds only, eliminating the need for costly divisions. One subset of this fast class of numbers is known as 'Mersenne' primes, and are of the form 2.sup.q -1. Another class of numbers that can be used with the present invention are known as 14 'Fermat' numbers of the form 2.sup.q +1. The present invention provides a system whose level of security is tunable. q acts as an encryption bit depth parameter, such that larger values of q provide increased security. Inversion operations normally require an elliptic curve algebra can be avoided by selecting an inversionless parameterization of the elliptic curve. Fast Fourier transform for an FFT multiply mod operations optimized for efficient Mersenne arithmetic, allow the calculations of very large q to proceed more quickly than with other schemes.