MIT’s low power encryption chip could make IoT devices more secure
The Internet of Things hasn't ever been super secure. Hacked smart devices have been blamed for web blackouts , broken internet , spam and phishing attempts and, of course, the coming smart-thing apocalypse . One of the reasons that we haven't seen the same sort of encryption as the web affords, however, is that such protection is energy-intensive. MIT is working on a new chip , however, to perform this sort of public-key encryption that only uses 1/400 as much power as a software solution would. In addition, the chip uses about 1/10 as much memory and executes processes 500 times as fast. MIT researchers used a technique called elliptic-curve encryption, which relies on a mathematical function to secure transactions. The new chip sets itself apart by being able to handle any kind of elliptic curve, which, in addition to low power use and a high speed of computation, makes it much more useful as an encryption solution. "Cryptographers are coming up with curves with dif...