Re: [Cfrg] Hardware requirements for elliptic curves

[Patrick Georgi <[e-mail]>]

Am 06.09.2014 um 20:42 schrieb Watson Ladd:
> While it would be desirable to address this issue of random primes,
> the Brainpool curves did, and I don't see wide uptake in hardware of
> (then again, I don't know much about the hardware market, so could be
> wrong).
http://dev.openecard.org/attachments/download/327/10-45-sign-me_OpenIdentitySummit2013.pdf indicates use of Brainpool in Germany's national ID cards. That will be some 60 million active smartcards in a couple of years (when older id cards expired). Some European passports seem to use it as well (as claimed on http://bugs.java.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=7007966).

The ID cards in particular include an opt-in feature that allows users to identify themselves electronically, eg. to provide an electronic equivalent to a signature for contracts signed online (The idea is to eliminate the need to snail mail hand-signed paperwork, at least for those using the system).

That feature makes it relevant for internet standards (unlike "internal" smartcard deployments that will never interact with a system inspired by IETF standards).


Patrick