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this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2026
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Yes it's becoming more common to have Elliptic Curve keys. But many still use RSA.
Elliptical curve for RSA was immediately phased out as soon as it was proven that the NIST was influenced by the NSA to implement it
And if I remember correctly, I believe it has more weaknesses (especially potential unknown ones) than RSA.
But it's definitely more efficient on embedded hardware, and for sure still gets used in that space. Not that I'd know cough cough
Well, as they say the S in IoT is for security
Ohhh so that's what they meant by putting IoT nodes on the Edge!
what are those weaknesses? so far I have only read for users that ECC is more secure than RSA
not only on embedded hardware, but everywhere and also in network transfer because of the smaller keys
Tl;dr - Choosing parameters for ECC is very important but also very difficult. Also, ECC is more resistant to quantum algorithms than RSA.
I didn't know about the PQC readiness of ECC so thank you!
To my understanding, picking the right ECC parameters is critical to ensuring large enough entropy that it can't be brute forced. There are a lot of weak and easy to compromise parameters, and a lot of trust has to be put in the standards organizations declaring which ones are "safe" like the NIST curves. Or you can choose your own, with a lot of risk associated.
There's also the fact that I believe there's more potential to leak info/expose side channels on the embedded devices running these protocols (I've personally had to worry at work!)
interesting about the security, it looks like ECC is arguably more secure against quantum algorithms? I first learned about all of this stuff about 10 years ago, and I only vaguely remember reading about the pqc resistance. Thanks for the update on that!
Edit: But I want to be clear I'm not a security expert, just some lady whose had to deal with embedded cryptography from time to time.
what? when did RSA want to use elliptical curves? its a completely different technology. and ECC itself was not phased out of anywhere. certain curves were, not ECC as a whole.