Crypto hardware (was: Using sound cards to accelerate RSA?)

[Douglas Barnes]

>The reason the market for this is weird is the same reason Sun took
>the DES chips off its motherboards years ago -- you can't conduct
>modern business with the fucked up export regime we are dealing with.
>

Also, even if national boundaries could be transcended (it's not just
the US any more on this score), I'll grant to Tim that server-oriented
cryptography h/w isn't going to be a mass-market item. It's going to
be a niche market, but it's an _absolutely vital_ niche market if this
stuff is going to take off in a big way. I, too, wouldn't invest big
bucks in a company that did nothing but server-oriented crypto h/w,
but I know that a lot of very good business ideas _won't work at all_
if this stuff doesn't exist.

At the same time, there is going to be a very good business in
consumer-oriented crypto devices as the problems inherent in using
a general purpose computer for storing & processing keys, e-cash,
etc. become apparent. I'm leaning away from the less specialized stuff,
e.g. "checkbook on a PCMCIA card" and toward general purpose cards
like the nat. semi. and telequip stuff. Both of these companies are
rumored to be offering server-oriented products in the next couple of
quarters to compliment their consumer product lines.

The problem with general purpose machines has nothing to do with
native processing vs. DSPs, but rather the fact that g.p. machines
have mechanical hard drives and don't fit in your pocket. They also
tend to house a lot of dubious other software that could get its
grubby hands on things. These issues of reliability, portability
and security don't affect things like soundcards, which is why
native signal processing is likely to win there, but not in the
use of crypto to secure valuable transactions.