Korean Cryptography Standards

PKI | KICS Standards | TTA Standards

KRyptoGate @ BCQRE.COM : http://www.cryptogate.com

Note) There are two kinds of standards on IT technology in Korea : TTA (Telecommunications and Technology Association) standards and KICS (Korean Information and Communication Standards). TTA standards are industry standards which may be proposed by individual or organization and is approved by TTA. On the other hand, KICS are official government standards approved by Ministry of Information and Communication of Korea. A TTA standard can be proposed as one of KICS if it survives as an active standard through one-year field experiments.

Public Key Infrastructure

Root Certification Authority in Korea

KCAC (Korea Certification Authority Central, ROOT CA)

Public Certification Authorities Licensed by Korea

NCASign by National Computerization Agency

Signgate by Korea Information Certificate Authority, Inc.

Sign Korea by Korea Securities Computer Corp.

Yes Sign by Korea Financial Telecommunications & Clearings Institute

Other Certification Authorities in Korea

CrossCert by KECA, Inc.

Korean Information and Communication Standards

[In Progress] SEED (Korean Data Encryption Standard)

Developers :

Report (version : Feburary 8, 1999) :

A design and analysis of SEED (in Korean)

Standard Specifications (the latest draft : June 29, 1999) :

128-bit symmetric block cipher SEED (in Korean)

Contributions for ISO/IEC standard for Encryption algorithms :

128-bit symmetric block cipher SEED (in English)

Implementations :

Block128@kisa.or.kr

Contact Info :

Block128@kisa.or.kr

References :

[1]: "Data Encryption Standard (DES)", Federal Information Processing Standards Publication FIPS PUB 46-2, FIPS PUB 46-3

Telecommunications Technology Association Standards

[TTA.KO -12.0001, 1998.] Digital Signature Mechanism with Appendix - Part 2 : Certificate-Based Digital Signature Algorithm (KCDSA)

Developers :

Financial support :

References :

[1]

"Digital Signature Standard (DSS)", Federal Information Processing Standards Publication FIPS PUB 186, FIPS PUB 186-1, FIPS PUB 186-2

[2]

Chae-Hoon LIM and Pil-Joong LEE, "A study on the proposed Korean Digital Signature Algorithm", Advances in Cryptology - Asiacrypt'98, Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS), Vol.1514, Springer-Verlag, 10/98, pp.175-186.

[3]

Ernest Brickell, David Pointcheval, Serge Vaudenay, and Moti Yung, "Design Validations for Discrete Logarithm Based Signature Schemes", To appear in PKC'2000, LNCS, Springer-Verlag.

Abstract : A number of signature schemes and standards have been recently designed, based on the discrete logarithm problem. Examples of standards are the DSA and the KCDSA. Very few formal design/security validations have already been conducted for both the KCDSA and the DSA, but in the "full" so-called random oracle model. In this paper we try to minimize the use of ideal hash functions for several Discrete Logarithm (DSS-like) signatures (abstracted as generic schemes). Namely, we show that the following holds: "if they can be broken by an existential forgery using an adaptively chosen-message attack then either the discrete logarithm problem can be solved, or some hash function can be distinguished from an ideal one, or multi-collisions can be found." Thus for these signature schemes, either they are equivalent to the discrete logarithm problem or there is an attack that takes advantage of properties of practical hash functions (SHA-1 or whichever high quality cryptographic hash function is used). What is interesting is that the schemes we discuss include KCDSA and slight variations of DSA. Further, since our schemes are very close to their standard counterparts they benefit from their desired properties (efficiency of computation/space, employment of certain mathematical operations and wide applicability to various algebraic structures). We feel that adding variants with strong validation of security is important to this family of signature schemes since, as we have experienced in the recent past, lack of such validation has led to attacks on standard schemes, years after their introduction. In addition, schemes with formal validation which is made public, may ease global standardization since they neutralize much of the suspicions regarding potential knowledge gaps and unfair advantages gained by the scheme designer's country (e.g. the NSA being the designers of DSS).