"Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com> writes:
The Deviant writes:
Buy the point is to prove that DES shouldn't be used, not that it CAN be brute forced. A known-plaintext attack doesn't show that. We hafta attack something we've never seen. (i.e. talk Netscape, or some other company, into generating a DES'd message, and keeping the keys safe)
Known plaintext isn't needed. You just need a plaintext with some decent statistical properties.
May I suggest that a better demonstration for the public would be to allow any person take a pre-determined text (such as "cypherpunks"), encrypt it wtih a key of their choice (40-bir or 56-bit, depending on what we're trying to prove), (i.e. demonstrating that some 40-bit key scheme is unsafe may be sufficient ) send the cyphertext to a GruborBot via e-mail or Web page, and get back within reasonable time the key(s) that were used. I think this is feasible; whether it's all lookup table or some lookup and some computation is details. --- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps