Swiss Consortium Chooses RPK Fast Public Key Cryptosystem for Next Generation Wireless Electronic Transactions

[Jack Oswald <joswald@rpkusa.com>]

Also see recent press coverage in Infoworld:

RPK announces deal for fast crypto with Swiss consortium
http://www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/displayStory.pl?97059.wrpk.htm 

SET 2.0 on the way
http://www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/displayArchive.pl?/97/16/t04-16.1.htm 

PRESS RELEASE

For Release May 19, 1997

RPK, Inc.: 	Jack Oswald, +1 408.479.7874, joswald@rpkusa.com, http://www.rpk.co.nz 
ADESA, Inc.: 	Maurice Jaccard,+41 22.910.29.14, maujacca@iprolink.ch


Swiss Consortium Chooses RPK Fast Public Key Cryptosystem for Next Generation Wireless Electronic Transactions
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) and ADESA, Inc. introduce HAWK VLSI cryptography-enhanced processor

San Francisco, CA - RPK, Inc. announced today that a consortium of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) and ADESA, Inc., a Swiss application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) design firm have chosen the RPK Fast Public Key Cryptosystem to provide strong cryptographic security in a next generation wireless electronic transactions application.  At the same time, EPFL and ADESA unveiled HAWK a new generation cryptography-enhanced microprocessor specifically designed for use in high speed/low power embedded applications.

"The RPK encryption technology won the design review after an extensive evaluation of all existing cryptosystems based on well known and understood cryptographic techniques," said Maurice Jaccard, Managing Director of ADESA, Inc. "With RPK there are no compromises. We get uncompromised security, high speed and low cost of implementation."

"RPK is a strong encryption technology based on well know and trusted cryptographic techniques," said Jack Oswald, President and CEO of RPK Inc. "Having RPK chosen by the Swiss for this breakthrough electronic-commerce application is the strongest endorsement we could possibly achieve for the RPK technology."


Wireless Electronic Transactions Application

The collaboration of RPK, EPFL and ADESA has resulted in a prototype application that promises to become the "wallet of the future".  This new wireless electronic transaction application may take the form of a credit card, a watch or a key chain and will sport features analogous to the leather wallets used today by billions of people worldwide.  Early designs of the system allow the user to withdraw and hold cash in multiple currencies, as well as, purchase and hold vouchers for hotels, planes and car rentals all through the use of wireless communications technology.  Officials in charge of the project envision that such devices could also become a personal key chain for gaining access to motor vehicles, offices and dwellings, in addition to traditional credit card uses.

ADESA concluded that performance of the RPK implementation in the prototype far exceeded existing smart card implementations based on the RSA and other algorithms.  The RPK technology performs the necessary encryption functions in less than 10 milliseconds using an 823-bit key compared to the best performing RSA-based equivalents that require greater than 100 milliseconds to perform the same type of function using a much weaker 512-bit key.  The application is not limited to 823-bit keys.  The design of the system, based on the new HAWK processor is flexible and can accommodate and process various sized keys, smaller or larger than 823 bits based on downloadable parameters.  ADESA officials explained that the simplicity of the RPK algorithm makes it much simpler to implement than the popular RSA approach.  It was RPK's simplicity, offering a much faster and cheaper solution while providing even higher security, that drove the choice over RSA for this application.  


About the RPK Fast Public Key Cryptosystem

RPK is a relatively new public key cryptosystem  that is based on mathematics widely used in cryptography today.  It was designed to be immediately commercially viable without the years of study that a new area of mathematics normally requires, such as the Elliptic Curve Cryptosystem (ECC).  The source of the security for RPK is the same as that of Diffie-Hellman key exchange, a widely used and well studied cryptographic technique. RPK offers real advantages for high speed networking, SmartCard, wireless communication applications as well as high volume software processes such as credit card transactions. 

RPK has at its core an invention called a Mixture Generator.  In the preferred implementation, three fairly long linear feedback shift registers are used.  This state machine has two modes of operation.  One that uses the shift registers for exponentiation and the other as a generator of a random stream of bits used in a combining phase for the actual encryption.  Effectively, RPK allows for the amortization of two "costly" exponentiations over the entire length of a message because the core engine is used to initially establish a secure state of the machine and then switches modes to perform very high speed encryption.  This has been referred to as a paradigm shift where the operation of encryption does not require the costly calculations that an RSA or even an ECC implementation would require for each block of data that is about the size of the key.  This mechanism can also be implemented in silicon quite efficiently such that at high strength it is much cheaper to produce than alternative technologies.  Finally, it is also possible to create a Mixture Generator that is made up of Elliptic Curve groups which would provide a similarly speedy and efficient initialization mode that could still produce high speed encryption as noted above.


About the HAWK VLSI Crypto Processor

The HAWK VLSI cryptography-enhanced processor is the result of more than three years of research and development conducted at the EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland in the area of high speed compression and encryption.  The HAWK processor will benefit most cryptography implementations but is particularly well suited for use with RPK.

"The HAWK processor is the most innovative approach that we have seen yet for implementing cryptographic processes in silicon," said Bill Raike, Chief Technology Officer for RPK Inc. and inventor of the RPK fast public key cryptosystem.  "HAWK breaks the barrier for high speed, low cost, low power and high strength encryption for embedded systems."



Background

RPK, Inc. is a supplier of next generation fast public key encryption technology.  RPK was invented and originally patented in New Zealand.  The company is therefore unaffected by restrictive U.S. export rules.  RPK has been successfully exported to virtually all countries of the world at high strength.  The company's headquarters are based in San Francisco, California, USA, with an offshore research and development center located outside of Auckland, New Zealand. http://www.rpk.co.nz 

ADESA, Inc. is a leading ASIC design firm based in Geneva, Switzerland with expertise in embedded and cryptographic applications.

EPFL is a leading teaching and research technical institute in Lausanne, Switzerland.  The school is known for its work in advanced processor design.


***