Public Key Cipher
In the last 40 years Key Exchange has been one of the greatest challenges in cryptography and in authentication systems. And, to date, the only known solutions where essentially those devised by Diffie and Hellman (The fathers of Public Key Exchange) which are vulnerable to MITM (Man in the Middle attacks), Elliptic Curves, and RSA(Rivest-Shamir-Adleman) which requires very large keys to be secure and large prime numbers, which the user cannot create on his own.
Crypt-Security has developed the QP-Kex algorithm to fill this gap, its competitive advantages include arbitrarily long keys (thanks to a very fast creation method) even on mobile devices (a comparative performance graph is available in the CryptoMobile subsection of this website), high security level even when standard sized keys are used, ease of use, and it can even be used in conjunction with QP-DYN as a key generator (As in our Secure Email Outlook Plug-in).
The CSEC QP-Kex (Key Exchange – Key Agreement) Algorithm
The CSEC QP-Kex is an innovative cryptographic method for the creation of SSKs (Secret Shared Keys) between two subjects via the sharing of publicly exchanged information and of secret information which they keep personally, it is thus an asymmetric algorithm.
Currently there are several cryptographic methods for Key Exchange, however, all of them are based on extremely rigid sets of mathematical structures and have little to no flexibility.
CSEC QP-Kex class of algorithms is extremely flexible, and is notably stronger (Cryptographically speaking) than current solutions.
The CSEC QP-Kex structure (especially its double parametrization variant) is much different from the other currently used public key agreement algorithms. The user has 2 rather than 1 public keys, and the other user combines these keys to create his public key and to create his copy of the SSK. Because of this, it is possible to call QP-Kex a strongly asymmetric algorithm.
This subdivision of public information makes it possible to add custom functions inside the algorithm, customizing its behavior and thus increasing greatly both its overall strength and the number of possible variants which can be developed from it.
Some of these variants have been successfully implemented in software with very good results and performance.
CSEC QP-Kex has also been showcased in international conventions and explained in lectures in various universities.
The innovative features of the CSEC QP-Kex family of algorithms make it an ideal candidate as a new standard in the Public Key Exchange scenario.
Practical uses
CSEC QP-Kex can create Session Keys at very high speeds starting from very few given parameters.
It’s strengths are:
- Speed
- Highly customizable
- Easiness of the creation and exchange of session keys.
CSEC QP-Kex can be paired with CSEC QP-DYN, resulting in a hybrid algorithm highly suited for the rapid exchange of data.
CSEC QP-Kex has been written in C++ and runs on both Windows and Linux environments, a JavaME implementation also exists for mobile devices.