Cryptographic security functions supported by SecureRF, provider of embedded security technology for secure RFID tags, Smart meters, M2M and other low resource devices.

Technology> Security Functions

SecureRF’s Cryptographic Technology Employs Ground-Breaking Authentication, Data Protection, and Encryption and Decryption Security Protocols

The engine within the SecureRF security solutions is the ground-breaking, Algebraic Eraser™. The Algebraic Eraser secures wireless sensor networks, machine to machine (M2M) applications such as Smart Grid controllers and smart meters, contactless payment systems, RFID tags, embedded systems and other low resource computing devices. This algorithm, which is thousands of times faster than other security protocols, supports a wide range of cryptographic functions:

Authentication: Enables validation between devices to confirm identity. Message authentication codes and digital signatures can be used to ensure data integrity against modification or forging.
Data Protection: Secures the entire data stream that is being carried, including the commands and information.
Encryption and Decryption: A type of data protection that employs the process of obscuring information to make it unreadable without special knowledge. Encrypting the data, with a key management protocol, allows trusted users to read the data.
Secured, Unencrypted Tag Data: Data on the device remains unencrypted, while a trust/policy layer maintains security—only transmitting it over a secured transport layer when in communication with cryptographically-authenticated trusted parties.
Additional Security: Key agreement protocols, hash functions and stream ciphers.

SecureRF’s technology offers a combination of symmetric (private key or secret key) and asymmetric (public key) cryptography that best achieves security, flexibility and scalability.

Our patented Algebraic Eraser offers the first known linear-based security protocol—thousands of times faster than any other commercially available security method on the market today. Using industry-standard protocols and our proprietary technology, our secure solutions deliver the highest authentication, privacy, integrity, and non-repudiation available today.

The Algebraic Eraser system’s security is not feasibly reversible; it uniquely cloaks and then erases components of our process making it virtually impregnable. The algorithm runs in linear time with respect to the key length, and employs highly non-linear operations in a non-commutative infinite monoid—yieding unprecedented security.

SecureRF has been granted U.S. Patent 7,649,999 for its technology invention in the field of cryptography. The technology, described in the patent entitled “Method and apparatus for establishing a key agreement protocol,” provides a system and method for generating a secret key to facilitate secure communications between users via an algorithmically efficient one-way function using a branch of mathematics referred to as braid group theory. The algorithm is computationally hard to reverse while rapidly computable, thus enabling it to run on devices with low computing resources.

The quality that makes braid theory desirable for cryptography is akin to the fact that a fishing line can get entangled in a few seconds while it may take hours to untangle. With mathematical braids, calculating in one direction is easy, but reversing it is extremely difficult. The protocol, which passes a high-order matrix through a very complex knot, is similar to classic cryptography in that it uses a large number of rounds of permutations and substitutions on an initial dataset.

Learn more about this topic in our white paper: An Introduction to Cryptographic Security Methods and Their Role in Securing Low Resource Computing Devices: An Overview of Public-key Cryptosystems based on RSA, Diffie-Hellman and the Next Generation of Public-key Cryptographic Security for Low-Resource Computing Devices - the Algebraic Eraser™.