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February 28, 2005
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ATHENA EXPANDS SECURITY
OFFERING WITH TWO NEW PRODUCTS
Gainesville, FL - February
28, 2005 - The Athena Group, a provider of high-performance,
low-power signal processing and security products, announced
the immediate availability of two new cores to its robust
family of security products. The new Secure Hash Algorithm
accelerator cores, SHA2-A100 and SHA3-A100, provide a comprehensive
new capability to address the evolving demands for secure
hash processing.
"The migration to new
secure hash algorithms is going to get underway quickly,"
says Dr. Jon Mellott, CTO of the Athena Group. "New research
has demonstrated that SHA-1 is inadequate, and new products
must incorporate stronger secure hashing. Athena's SHA2-A100
and SHA3-A100 cores not only deliver higher throughput, but
execute the strongest SHA algorithms of the FIPS 180-2 standard,
including SHA-224, -256, -384, and -512, while maintaining
backwards compatibility with SHA-1 for legacy applications."
A new paper by three researchers
at Shangdong University in China has cast considerable doubt
on the effectiveness of the SHA-1 hashing algorithm, a standard
used around the world for over a decade. The researchers claim
to have developed a new method for attacking the SHA-1 algorithm,
which is the basis of digital signatures in numerous protocols
including SSL (Secure Socket Layer), which is used to encrypt
traffic to and from millions of websites.
When the SHA-1 algorithm was
introduced in the 1990s as the Secure Hash Algorithm Standard,
the National Institute of Standards and Technology stated
"The SHA-1 is called secure because it is computationally
infeasible to find a message which corresponds to a given
message digest, or to find two different messages which produce
the same message digest." The new attack, however, demonstrates
that it may be much easier than previously thought to cause
the collisions that produce identical signatures.
Noted cryptographer Bruce Schneier,
Chief Technology officer of Counterpane Security, Inc, wrote
this week on his website that "This attack builds on
previous attacks on SHA-0 and SHA-1, and is a major, major
cryptanalytic result. It pretty much puts a bullet into SHA-1
as a hash function for digital signatures."
About The Athena Group,
Inc.
The Athena Group, Inc. of Gainesville, Florida licenses signal
processing and security technology that delivers breakthrough
performance, reduced area, and reduced power consumption in
a broad range of SoC products. Athena technology is ideal
for leading edge applications such as secure e-commerce, wireless
communications, and video compression.
Athena was founded in 1986
and is privately held.
# # #
For information on Athena products,
contact:
Pat Rugg, VP Sales and Marketing
The Athena Group, Inc.
408 W. University Avenue, Suite 306
Gainesville, FL 32601
Phone: (352) 371-2567 ext. 307
Toll-free: (800) 741-7440
Email: prugg@athena-group.com
Internet: www.athena-group.com
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