Hifn Advances Open Source Cryptography

Hifn(TM), the power behind network and information security, announced today a company initiative to advance the level of support and ease of use of hardware security processors. Hifn has contracted with Xelerance Inc., the recognized open source security specialists, in a major development effort to make the industry's fastest cryptographic accelerators as easy to use as graphics or sound cards.

The project integrates Hifn's 795x algorithm accelerators, as well as the 7855 and 8155 security processors, with Linux and FreeBSD. The project also includes integration with the Openswan IPsec protocol stack. In the open source world, Openswan is viewed as the most advanced and flexible VPN solution. Once complete, the project will provide customers with a ready to use, fully-integrated, hardware accelerated, IPsec VPN.

"We want to make high-security cryptography easy to use," said Hank Cohen, Lookaside security manager for Hifn. "We chose to partner with Xelerance in this project because they combine tremendous experience in IPsec systems development with an unmatched position of respect in the open source community."

"We were very pleased to work with Hifn to bring this new level of security integration to the open source user community," said Patrick Naubert CEO of Xelerance. "Our users have been clamoring for hardware security acceleration in Openswan and now we can fill that need."

The foundation for this work is the Open Cryptography Framework (OCF) of Keromytis et. al. The OCF is a hardware abstraction layer within the operating system that allows a variety of hardware and software cryptographic service providers to support both in-kernel crypto users like IPsec as well as user space crypto applications like SSL.

Hifn's work with Xelerance extends the OCF in several ways. Early cryptography chips simply accelerated the application of a cryptographic transform to a data buffer. More recent security processors can offload protocol processing as well as perform complete IP to IPsec transforms in a single pass. Hifn's work with Xelerance extends the OCF to take advantage of the added functionality in Hifn's accelerators and processors to support packet processing, as well as integrate the extended OCF functionality with the native IP and IPsec protocol stacks.

Other extensions include support for IPcomp data compression, public key cryptography support and integration of hardware random number generators.

Availability

The work is licensed under free software licensing (BSD). Hifn and Xelerance are working together to have this work incorporated into standard software distributions from FreeBSD and Linux. Until the work is incorporated into standard distributions Hifn will make the code available for download from its extranet site (requires registration) http://extranet.hifn.com/home/. Open source support for Hifn's 795x algorithm accelerators will be available this month and support for the 7855 and 8155 security processors will be available in April 2007.

About Hifn

Hifn powers network and information security. Leveraging over a decade of leadership and expertise in data encryption and compression, we are a trusted partner to industry innovators for whom security is critical to their success. With the majority of secure global communications flowing through Hifn technology, the convergence of security, storage and assured access drives our product roadmap forward. We will continue as the first resource for the toughest security requirements because we anticipate as we innovate in a field that leaves no margin for error. Hifn sets the industry standards and technology firsts to secure, compress and assure information wherever needed. For more information, please visit: http://www.hifn.com.

About Xelerance

Xelerence Corporation was founded by the original development team of Openswan. Xelerance plays the dual role of leading the open source Openswan community, as well as, providing development, support and network design services, for secure Linux based systems.

Xelerance Corporation's expertise is in accelerating the design, development and deployment of usable secure systems; largely based on our open source IPsec stack Openswan, X12tpd, freeRADIUS, DNSsec and Asterisk.

"Safe Harbor" Statement under the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Specifically, statements regarding the Company's future financial performance including, without limitation, statements related to the higher integration with the Open Source community and users clamoring to use the Open Source are all forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Safe Harbor that may cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements contained herein. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described herein include, but are not limited to: dependency on a small number of customers; customer demand and customer ordering patterns; and orders from Hifn's customers may be below the company's current expectations. These and other risks are detailed from time to time in Hifn's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Hifn expressly disclaims any obligation to update or revise its forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

NOTE: Hi/fn(R) is a registered trademark of hi/fn, inc. Hifn is a trademark of hi/fn, inc. Openswan is a trademark of Xelerance Corp.

EDITORS NOTE: Keromytis, A.D., "Cryptography As An Operating System Service: A Case Study", ACM Transactions on Computer Systems, Vol. 24, No. 1, February 2006.

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