The skipjack review committe wrote: | 3. Susceptibility to Brute Force Attack by Exhaustive Search [...] | An implementation of SKIPJACK optimized for a single processor on | the 8-processor Cray YMP performs about 89,000 encryptions per | second. At that rate, it would take more than 400 billion years to | try all keys. Assuming the use of all 8 processors and aggressive | vectorization, the time would be reduced to about a billion years Could someone explain why jumping to 8 processors knocks the time down by a factor of 400, instead of a factor of 8? Is the 400 billion years a load of crap, intended to sound more impressive than 8? adam -- Adam Shostack adam@bwh.harvard.edu Politics. From the greek "poly," meaning many, and ticks, a small, annoying bloodsucker. Have you signed the anti-Clipper petition?