How can Internet users benefit from the Elliptic Curve technology?
RSA is the most commonly used public key encryption scheme on the Web today. However, it is far too compute intensive for small, lightweight devices. These devices have become extremely popular, but have a very limited amount of memory and computational power. They are not as well equipped as home PCs for doing RSA computation. People who are using these devices are unwilling to cope with any decreased security, yet they like the convenience of the devices. Security and privacy on these tiny devices can become an even greater concern for consumers as they conduct more and more secure transactions. ECC is crucial for today’s wireless platforms cell phones, handheld PDAs, smart cards, and more, because ECC can run very efficiently on these tiny devices and yet provide the same high level of security protection. The beauty of the Elliptic Curve cryptographic technology is that it uses very small keys and is a much more efficient encryption scheme. For example, most Web sites on the Intern
