| PRESS
RELEASE
Infineon and SPYRUS Partnership Delivers First Products Incorporating
New
San Jose, Calif. - February 16, 2005
- SPYRUS, Inc. and Infineon Technologies today announced the
availability of personal authentication and security products
to support the Global Information Grid, utilizing the new suite
of advanced crypto algorithms known as "Suite B."
Suite B is expected to be the de facto standard to protect data
for decades to come, for both government and business users.
The Global Information Grid (GIG), as it is being defined by
the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), provides a fundamental
shift away from centralized "information-push" technologies,
toward a new era of information sharing by authorized users,
anywhere, anytime. Building on the currently available Internet
technologies, the GIG will provide to the U.S. DoD, its allies
and coalition partners, a secure, highly available, and globally
interconnected information environment to meet the real-time
and near real-time information needs for security, military,
diplomatic, and civil government purposes as well as for commercial
enterprises.
The National Security Agency (NSA) publicly announced in October
2003 its intent to adopt elliptic curve cryptography (ECC),
which forms the heart of the Suite B algorithms. SPYRUS received
the first patent sublicense for elliptic curve cryptography
that has been issued by the National Security Agency, under
the terms of the NSA Field of Use patent license. The "Field
of Use" refers to the technology and methods necessary
to implement patented technology, utilizing elliptic curves
in GF (p) with key strengths greater than 255-bits, with implementations
that are certified to meet the FIPS 140-2 security standard.
SPYRUS products implement ECC technology specified for use by
the U.S. Government, and increasingly adopted by other governments
as well as the commercial sector.
SPYRUS products support the full range of ECC curves in GF(p)
that have been approved for use by the U.S. Government, from
P-256 to P-521. SPYRUS products also support the full range
of SHA-224/256/384/512, and AES-128/192/256. The Full and One-Pass
ECMQV key establishment schemes are supported, along with the
five EC Diffie-Hellman schemes required by NIST's Special Publication
SP 800-56. The full range of capabilities that might be selected
for a particular application will therefore be available in
a FIPS 140-2 certified SPYRUS product.
Infineon and SPYRUS have been partners since the mid-1990s.
Together they produced the first smart card and USB cryptographic
token certified to meet the FIPS 140-1 Level 2 and Level 3 security
standards, for use in both Government and commercial business
enterprises. This collaboration now provides the market with
the first token to offer complete Suite B capabilities to provide
the strongest security protection in smart card, USB token,
and secure mass storage products available anywhere. It is being
submitted for certification under the stringent FIPS 140-2 Level
3 cryptographic security standard by an agency of the U.S. Government
(NIST). The Infineon SLE66CX642P chip is in the process of being
certified under Common Criteria at an EAL5+ level of trust by
the German Government.
SPYRUS plans to migrate its security solution to Infineon's
new 66PE family of secure microcontroller ICs to take advantage
of enhanced features including more efficient EEPROM programming,
33MHz CPU clock, and smaller die size. These technologies include
Infineon's multi-layer chip design, which includes an active
shield to prevent tampering, the Advanced Cryptographic Engine
(ACE) as well as a Triple DES cryptographic coprocessor to accelerate
RSA, ECC and DES computations, together with state-of-the-art
techniques to defeat possible side-channel analysis attacks.
These techniques include instruction timing randomization, complementary
balanced circuitry, encrypted memory bus transfers, and current
scrambling techniques.
SPYRUS technologies build upon that solid security base by utilizing
their own intellectual property and algorithm implementations
to add highly optimized support for ECC, AES, SHA-2, RSA, DSA,
and other legacy algorithms running on their secure smart card
operating system (SPYCOSR).
"This partnership between Infineon and SPYRUS provides
new, cost-effective opportunities for customers while offering
best-in-class security features," said Joerg Borchert,
VP for Chip Card and Security ICs, Infineon Technologies North
America. "Combining Infineon's leading edge security microcontroller
technology with SPYRUS' embedded technologies will provide customers
with improved legacy performance together with Suite B product
capabilities today and ultimately improve time to deployment
for systems with maximum security protection."
"SPYRUS is committed to providing products that meet the
U.S. Government's highest standards to secure and protect sensitive
information," said Sue Pontius, President and CEO of SPYRUS.
"With NSA's grant of the ECC license to SPYRUS, we are
ready to meet the anticipated demand in all markets that require
strong security. Combining Infineon's security IC expertise
with our cryptographic implementation has enabled SPYRUS to
be first to market with the most advanced products available
today."
About Infineon Technologies
Infineon Technologies AG, Munich, Germany, offers semiconductor
and system solutions for automotive, industrial and multi-market
sectors, for applications in communication, as well as memory
products. With a global presence, Infineon operates through
its subsidiaries in the US from San Jose, CA, in the Asia-Pacific
region from Singapore and in Japan from Tokyo. In fiscal year
2004 (ending September), the company achieved sales of Euro
7.19 billion (US $8.93 billion) with about 35,600 employees
worldwide. Infineon is listed on the DAX index of the Frankfurt
Stock Exchange and on the New York Stock Exchange (ticker symbol:
IFX). Further information is available at www.infineon.com.
About SPYRUS, Inc.
SPYRUS, Inc, is a privately held U.S. corporation headquartered
in San Jose, California with offices in Canada, Belgium, and
Australia. Since its inception in 1992, SPYRUS has specialized
in cryptographic services utilizing high assurance devices to
publish, distribute, and provide access control for electronic
data. SPYRUS' mission is to set the standard for the new era
of multinational information sharing and long term data protection.
Further information is available at www.spyrus.com.
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