Microsoft in the crypto game ... I would laugh if it wasn’t so sad. They can’t even keep their own publicly offered software safe,
There's no pleasing the anti-MS trolls, is there? Why bother even saying anything? The fact that you said this tells me that you don't understand what this means.
Elliptical Curve Cryptography (ECC) is a newer form of cryptographic trapdoor that, up to this point, is not able to be cracked. Due to the nature of the mathematics behind the generation of an elliptical curve, it has significant advantages over a random number generator or the use of multiple primes in a complex logarithmic equation. A computer works best when given a set of variables to apply to an equation with an endpoint. ECC provides those variables (a prime number, a curve equation, and a public number) across a complex equation that is, again at this point, impossible to reverse without knowing the exact values selected.
Since ECC is so much more secure than standard number generation, the values selected for the encryption variables can be much smaller than normal which means the computer has to spend significantly less time crunching numbers to reach a prime or a curve equation. If you consider that an average CPU today runs around 3.00 GHz and there are at least 2 of them on a processor die in most PCs, that's 3 billion operations per second (times 2). The article states:
“On Intel’s Haswell, Ivy Bridge and Sandy Bridge architectures, our software computes a variable-base scalar multiplication in 59,000, 71,000 cycles and 74,000 cycles, respectively; and, on the same platforms, our software computes a Diffie-Hellman shared secret in 92,000, 110,000 cycles and 116,000 cycles, respectively."
This means that on an average computer die, these keys can be generated in 1.967e-5 cycles or 50,000+ keys per second at a minimum; or one DH shared secret in 3.867e-5 cycles or 25862 DH shared secrets per second at a maximum.
The mathematics behind this are very complex and implementation in an operating environment has been slow to adopted. The fact that Microsoft has stepped up and done this tells me three things:
1. They want the public to have this power and they want the MS OS to lead the way with it
2. They are dedicated to encryption technologies against the advising of the US federal government
3. They want their operating environments to be as secure as possible
If you fail to see that and have nothing else to say other than something to bash Microsoft for their efforts, then you are no better than a fanboy having a conniption over a competitor's attempts to make the market stronger for the users overall.