2002

Contacts:
Scott Crenshaw
NTRU Cryptosystems, Inc.
(617) 948-9138
screnshaw@ntru.com

NTRU Announces World's Fastest Aecure Public Key Cryptography System

Operates 100 Times Faster Than RSA and Certicom

Boston, MA -- January 19, 2000 -- NTRU Cryptosystems, Inc. today announced the availability of the Tumbler(tm) software toolkit implementing NTRU, the world's fastest secure public key cryptography system. NTRU delivers encryption, decryption, authentication and digital signature features at speeds over 100 times faster than alternative systems, including those from RSA (Nasdaq:RSAS) and Certicom (Toronto:CIC), at equivalent security levels.

"The need for public key security is moving from traditional Information Technology (IT) applications to mass market consumer electronics devices, such as wireless telephones, portable music players and digital televisions." said Scott Crenshaw, NTRU Vice President of Business Development. "These applications have vastly different requirements than IT applications. Solutions for consumer devices must be fast, inexpensive to implement in hardware, and consume minimal power. All of the existing technologies, including Elliptic Curve Cryptosystems (ECC), are just too large and slow. NTRU delivers the ideal solution for the emerging consumer electronics market."

Key benefits of NTRU over the competition include:

• Fast performance, even on low speed processors
• Small memory footprint
• Low cost to implement in hardware (fewer gates required)
• Increased server performance (supports more users with fewer servers)
• Reduced battery consumption

"NTRU is innovative technology," stated Jim Kotanchik, NTRU Vice President of Engineering. "Prior to NTRU, users had to accept slow operation or make security compromises. NTRU allows the highest security levels at speeds two orders of magnitude faster than competitive systems, eliminating the need to compromise either speed or security. The Tumbler toolkit enables developers to easily incorporate NTRU into their C or Java applications, making integration of NTRU simple and convenient."

NTRU is ideally suited for applications where high performance, high security and low power consumption are required, such as wireless data communications, Internet music and video distribution, micropayments, e-commerce and embedded devices.

Developed by a team of world-renowned mathematicians and cryptographers, NTRU provides the fastest and most-efficient public key cryptography solution -- at all security levels. Unlike other technologies, NTRU resists parallel processing attacks. Likewise, its disposable-key technology allows frequent public key changes. Those properties dramatically reduce the risk of power analysis, timing attacks, and the danger of security breaches due to misplaced, lost, or intercepted keys. Perhaps most important of all, NTRU offers high levels of security without the performance sacrifices inherent in systems such as RSA and ECC. The NTRU technology has been extensively studied by both the academic and commercial cryptographic community. Complete technical details, including a tutorial, are available on NTRUs web site at http://www.ntru.com/cryptolab/tutorials.htm.

The Tumbler toolkit was developed by the Tao Group, Ltd. (http://www.tao-group.com/) of Reading, UK.

NTRU's unprecedented performance advantages open up new options for security. Its superfast key generation allows the encryption of every transaction with a different public key. Disposable key use enables completely new paradigms in encryption -- for example, encrypting every second of a music clip with a different key. That means, on a three-minute clip, the time and cost of breaking the encryption increase by a factor of 180. Disposable keys also allow every wireless data transaction to be encrypted with a different independent key. Unlike other systems that claim to generate multiple encryptions keys to protect media, NTRU disposable keys are completely independent of one another, dramatically enhancing security. Disposable keys will become increasingly necessary as insecure channels carry valuable data.

At the heart of NTRU is a collection of mathematical algorithms based on manipulating lists of very small integers. This allows NTRU to achieve high speeds with the use of minimal computing power. NTRU is the first practical and secure public key cryptosystem not based on factorization or discrete logarithm problems, which require the use of extremely large integers or complex structures. The computations performed in NTRU involve simpler processes that can be performed very quickly even on inexpensive 8-bit processors at security levels equivalent to other public key cryptosystems.

About NTRU Cryptosystems

NTRU Cryptosystems, Inc. makes the world's fastest secure public key cryptography solutions operating over 100 times faster than competitive systems including those from Certicom Corporation (Toronto:CIC) and RSA Security (Nasdaq:RSAS) at equivalent security levels. NTRU is the best public key cryptography solution for wireless data communications, digital music and video distribution, e-commerce and embedded applications. Strategic investors include Sony Corporation. For more information, see http://www.ntru.com/ or call NTRU at 888.346.NTRU or 617.948.9138. NTRU is pronounced "En' true."

NTRU, F@stWTLS, the NTRU logo and the F@stWTLS logo are trademarks of NTRU Cryptosystems, Inc. Portions of NTRU's system are the subject of pending patent applications in the US and internationally.

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