13 January 1999

    Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1999 08:08:14 +0000
    To: ukcrypto@maillist.ox.ac.uk
    From: David Parkinson <dparkins@alien.bt.co.uk>
    Subject: IrishCrypto

    From the front page of today's Times <www.the-times.co.uk>
    As usual (technically) content free.  Anyone know any
    technical details?

    David

        Teenager cracks e-mail code

         BY AUDREY MAGEE, IRELAND CORRESPONDENT

      AN Irish schoolgirl was yesterday hailed as a
      mathematical genius after devising a code for sending
      secret messages by computer.

      Sarah Flannery used the science of cryptography to
      design a code that is ten times faster than the one currently
      used to convert confidential information so that it can be
      sent via the Internet and e-mail. She has been inundated
      with offers of jobs and scholarships from international
      computer companies and universities.

      Miss Flannery, 16, from Blarney, Co Cork, used matrices
      to formulate an alternative to RSA, the current data
      protection code, devised by three students at the
      Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1977. The result
      is an algorithm, a mathematical blueprint, that is far faster
      than the RSA and equally secure.

      Miss Flannery, whose father, David, lectures in
      mathematics at Cork Institute of Technology, devised her
      code to enter the Irish Young Scientists and Technology
      Exhibition. She won at the weekend and left the judges
      unable fully to comprehend her project. They described
      her work as "brilliant" and one judge advised her to patent
      it.

      Miss Flannery said she was thrilled. "I had to go through
      lots of stuff before I finalised the theory," she said. "I
      reached critical points where I would get stuck for three
      weeks or so. I just kept thinking about it and then the
      whole thing slipped into place." The oldest of five children,
      she earned eight As in her junior certificate, the Irish
      equivalent of GCSEs, with extra tuition from her father.

      Miss Flannery is now deciding what to do with her new
      code, the Cayley-Purser, named after Arthur Cayley, an
      eminent 19th-century Cambridge mathematician, and
      Michael Purser, a cryptographer who inspired her. She is
      considering publishing her findings rather than patenting as
      she does not want people to pay for her discovery.

      She will represent Ireland at the EU Science Contest in
      Greece in September.

    From: William Whyte <wwhyte@baltimore.ie>
    To: "'ukcrypto@maillist.ox.ac.uk'" <ukcrypto@maillist.ox.ac.uk>
    Cc: "'Michael Purser'" <michael@baltimore.ie>
    Subject: RE: IrishCrypto
    Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1999 10:00:37 -0000

    On Wednesday, January 13, 1999 8:08 AM, David Parkinson [SMTP:dparkins@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@baltimore.ie
    Website http://www.baltimoreinc.com/
    Baltimore - Global e-Security

    From: William Whyte <wwhyte@baltimore.ie>
    To: "'ukcrypto@maillist.ox.ac.uk'" <ukcrypto@maillist.ox.ac.uk>
    Subject: RE: IrishCrypto
    Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1999 11:26:27 -0000

    On Wednesday, January 13, 1999 10:01 AM, William Whyte [SMTP:wwhyte@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