Certicom has created and launched an ECC Challenge, giving cryptographers and mathematicians who are new to the Elliptic Curve Cryptosystem (ECC) the benefit of hands-on experience with elliptic curve algebra. The Certicom ECC Challenge is the result of research and development into ECC by Certicom's cryptographic experts.

The Certicom ECC Challenge, posted at Certicom's web site, is expected to draw participation from cryptographers and mathematicians around the world, giving them the opportunity to work with elementary elliptic curve algebraic problems and test their own knowledge against what are internationally recognized to be difficult and infeasible problems.

Participants in the Certicom ECC Challenge must try to compute an ECC private key at a particular key size, given the corresponding ECC public key and a set of parameters. As a lead-up to the Challenge, Certicom has included a set of Exercise problems, the simplest of which should be solved in a matter of hours following the Challenge's launch.

Prizes will be awarded for the first correct answer to each of the Exercises. Mathematical software to facilitate cryptography-related computations and a copy of the Handbook of Applied Cryptography will be awarded for the 79 and 89-bit Exercises, and US$5,000 for the 97-bit Exercises.

Prizes have also been set for both Level I and II Challenge problems, including those which are considered infeasible based on current knowledge and available computing capabilities. The highest prize is US$100,000 to find a 359-bit ECC private key. The elliptic curves for the Level II Challenges meet the stringent security requirements imposed by forthcoming ANSI banking standards, specifically ANSI X9.62 and X9.63.

If you want to find out more about the ECC Challenge, you may want to check out these sites:

The Certicom ECC Challenge

Certicom's ECC Tutorials and Whitepapers.

The HP/LiDIA Elliptic Curve Cracking Page

Source: certicom.com