On Tue, 1 Oct 1996 16:27:18 -6, Peter Trei wrote:
1. Is this a good idea? What will happen if DES becomes perceived as insecure?
That's Declan's department (and other non-clueless journalists - declan is just the most visible). If it get's widespread and the target is something like Digicash, it'd get picked up by the Crime/Snoozeweek crowd.
2. What is the probability of success required to make it worth doing?
Judging by the people on the list, about 50%.... <g>
3. What would be the consequences of failure?
Depends on the type of failure - ranging from dreadful to minor.
4. What other platforms than NT/Win95/Pentium should be considered? I could write a Unix demon version, but unless it's tailored for the cpu, a lot of efficency is lost (The aggregate number of idle cycles available for testing is the crucial number).
A Linux port (Pentium) would be *very* good - lots of Linux people tend to by pro-cpunk. Ditto for OS/2. And who knows, if you hyped the business aspects enough you might even find IBM or some other large corp willing to donate some time on large system.
5. What's a good target? Ideally, we need a plaintext/ciphertext pair,
ecash, ecash, ecash! Given all the attention anything that 'will give your VISA number to evil hackers' gets, this is an important target. It's serious and newsworthy.
6. What other incentives can be used to recruit machines?
Maybe give away a Pentium to the person who finds it? (Assuming donations from list members, of course) # Chris Adams <adamsc@io-online.com> | http://www.io-online.com/adamsc/adamsc.htp # <cadams@acucobol.com> | send mail with subject "send PGPKEY" "That's our advantage at Microsoft; we set the standards and we can change them." --- Karen Hargrove, Microsoft (quoted in the Feb 1993 Unix Review editorial)