At 03:35 PM 6/18/97 -0500, ARTURO GRAPA YSUNZA wrote:
I actually got a kick out of reading the bullshit in the press release. ... You should have given credit to DESCHALL whose effort is be applauded.
I mostly agree with Arturo, especially about giving credit and indicating how many machines were participating. Publicity about how the Feds are trying to push weak crypto on us is worthwhile - the timing was especially pleasant given Kerrey's new anti-crypto bills in Congress. Sameer's post did two things - hyped his own company (hmmm :-) and provided an opportunity for good inflammatory rhetoric. On the other hand, DES really is _much_ weaker than the DESCHALL project indicates - Intel CPUs aren't at all tuned for DES cracking, whereas a custom DES-cracker with similar horsepower could have done the job a lot faster. If I remember right, Wiener's design used 64,000 chips, about as many as there were PCs working DESCHALL, for a crack that would take hours instead of months. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com # You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto/pgp # (If this is a mailing list or news, please Cc: me on replies. Thanks.)