At 4:45 PM 8/17/95, Rev. Mark Grant wrote:
In this case he had to use roughly $10,000 worth of computing power (ballpark figure for having access to 120 workstations and a few parallel supecomputers for 8 days) to break a single message.
Hmm, I don't know about anyone else around here, but my workstation is idle 99% of the time. I could almost certainly get access to all the spare CPU cycles on 120 workstations for free, and I suspect that a lot of people (particularly hackers) could do so as well. There's no need to spend $ 10,000 on renting them.
But, Mark, estimates of the cost to crack a key _must_ be based on market prices, not on opportunistic access to machines. Such access is good for occasional, or one-shot, deals, but not for routine use. For example, one doesn't say "Hey, I don't see how Hertz can charge $40 a day to rent a car...my friend lets me use his for free." The technical issues of whether there are faster ways to break the keys, or how fast and far MIPS prices will drop, is a separate issue. "Standard accounting practices" dictate the way to estimate production costs. --Tim May ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net (Got net?) | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-728-0152 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Corralitos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^756839 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."