Student Develops Crypto Alternative

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February 23, 1999 (12:00 AM EST)

By Angela M. Pugh,

A 16-year-old student has developed an encryption algorithm that could be 10 times as fast as RSA, the code that safeguards most of the traffic now traversing the Internet. And if the new technique proves as strong and speedy as it seems, it could become the main method for protecting online transactions.

Sarah Flannery, an intern at the Dublin, Ireland, office of Baltimore, showed an interest in cryptography so was given an unfinished algorithm to work on. "She took it and made it work," said senior cryptographer William Whyte. "Then she invented a variation of it that's twice as fast."

"Usually we just walk around and make tea," Flannery said. "But Baltimore was really good to me."

The exact details of Flannery's algorithm, which is called the Cayley-Purser algorithm, have not yet been released to the public. Baltimore wants to test it in-house first to make sure there are no holes. Then, says Whyte, other cryptographers will take a look at it. "If no one has successfully attacked it in about three years, it could start to be seen as a commercially viable alternative to RSA," Whyte said.

"This is the type of thing that could change the face of security in seconds," said Steph Marr, vice president of information security at networking consultancy Predictive Systems, in New York. "If it turns out to be faster and as good as it seems, it could eventually replace RSA." And having multiple cryptography schemes to choose from will be a good thing, he said, because "it greatly improves security for e-commerce transactions." Given predictions from International Data Corp., in Framingham, Mass., that the number of people using the Web for online shopping should grow from 18 million in 1997 to a 128 million in 2002, a faster algorithm could come in very useful.