Irdeto acquires Philips white box cryptography IP suite to boost security offering

AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS: Irdeto, a leading expert in content and business model protection solutions and services, has acquired Philips Electronics' full suite of white-box cryptology patents, patent applications, software and knowledge, to significantly booster its existing IP portfolio for its Irdeto Cloakware solution.

In the ever-evolving software security space, white-box cryptography is emerging as a key technology to combat hacking and intellectual property theft in unsecure, untrusted environments, which is a common problem for PCs, set-top boxes and other devices involving DRM and conditional access applications.

Irdeto's acquisition of Philips’ patents, patent applications and knowledge improves the competitive strength of its Irdeto Cloakware solutions and complements its own existing IP, white-box cryptography products, skills and new discoveries.

The Philips team has a strong reputation for standard crypto development, including how to adjust it for white-box attacks. Irdeto’s Cloakware is uniquely positioned to capitalize on this knowledge to provide strong coverage of an already-important commercial technology and to offer more robust white-box cryptography-based solutions.

In addition, the acquisition enhances Irdeto’s toolset to meet growing market demand from software developers at large technology enterprises who are already starting to use white-box cryptography solutions to protect critical software applications.

"This acquisition allows us to even further bolster Irdeto Cloakware’s considerable IP portfolio, boosting our current white-box IP portfolio to the benefit of our customers,” said Graham Kill, CEO of Irdeto. “It demonstrates Irdeto's continued dedication to and investment in software security, reinforcing its lead in innovation and ensuring our customers are protected to the highest level.”

"Irdeto is spearheading the fight against piracy and hacking as the threat intensifies in an increasingly digital world. The advancement of white-box cryptography is important in helping to combat attacks by addressing a more severe threat model where the attacker can observe everything, access all aspects of the target system or application and may have the black-box knowledge of the crypto algorithm," added Kill.

"By combining its existing skills and expertise with Philips IP, Irdeto can truly take the lead in the white-box crypto security market," stated Ruud Peters, CEO of Philips Intellectual Property and Standards.

With over one billion deployed applications on PCs, set-top boxes (STBs), mobile phones and media players, Irdeto’s Cloakware product is the security cornerstone of many of the world’s largest, most recognizable and technologically-advanced companies.

Irdeto’s Cloakware provides trusted security software and services to top-tier companies to protect their core digital assets that create revenue-generating business models. By keeping their core digital assets “cloaked” throughout creation, distribution and consumption, companies can protect their existing business models and create new sources of revenue.

Irdeto’s Cloakware protects billions of digital assets across servers, desktops and embedded devices that are deployed worldwide using our proven software security and services. It is the security cornerstone of many of the world's largest, most recognizable and technologically advanced companies.