Timeless credibility: e-signature with 12 288 bit key length certificate is achieved

Specialists at T-Systems Hungary have recently implemented successful digital signature with 12 288 bit key length certificate within the frames of the Virtual Identity research project.

This result is considered to be a milestone from the aspect of future long-term data protection technologies, permanent protection of personal data and transaction verification. As part of the project task, specialists of T-Systems also tested user-side applications (e.g. browsers) capable of receiving such key lengths. In spite of the preliminary expectations, today, many software tools are capable of handling keys of this length. Considering today’s information technology development tends, in theory it will not be possible to break 12 288 bit keys using raw computing capacity for more than a 100 years (or until the quantum computer operating in the practice is developed). For comparison: in today’s systems 2 048 long keys are considered to be secure. During the tests it turned out that although the key generation is a time-consuming process, the advanced security key created as a result operates with acceptable client-side response times. This is especially important for the authentication of applications and transactions running on mobile devices.

The goal of the Virtual Identity research project of T-Systems Magyarország is to implement simple and reliable authentication of the transactions by integrating biometric identification and central storage of keys, and to ensure fast and secure administration in cases requiring personal identification for the Y and Z generation in the future, without the need of using various cards, just with the help of mobile telephones.