Cryptography Research

This article is about the American company established in 1995. For a discussion on general research into cryptography, see history of cryptography.

Cryptography Research, Inc. is a San Francisco based cryptography company specializing in applied cryptographic engineering, including technologies for building tamper-resistant semiconductors. It was purchased on June 6, 2011, by Rambus for $342.5M.^[1] The company licenses patents for protecting cryptographic devices against power analysis attacks.^[2] The company's CryptoFirewall-brand ASIC cores are used in pay TV conditional access systems and anti-counterfeiting applications.^[3] CRI also developed BD+, a security component in the Blu-ray disc format, and played a role in the format war between HD DVD and Blu-ray.^[4][5] The company's services group assists with security testing, disaster recovery, and training.

Cryptography Research, Inc.

Company type	Private subsidiary
Founded	1995; 30 years ago (1995)
Headquarters	San Francisco, California
Key people	Paul Kocher, President and Chief Scientist
Products	Technology licensing, secure semiconductors
Revenue	$10M–$100M
Number of employees	25–100
Parent	Rambus
Website	rambus.com/security

Cryptography Research protects its core operations from outside attack by maintaining a secured local network that is not connected to the Internet at all. Employees who need to work with sensitive data have two computers on their desks — one to access the secure network, and a separate computer to access the Internet.^[6]