Dimitri Vulis <dlv@bwalk.dm.com> writes:
Bill Payne was with Sandia national lab (where they quite a bit of crypto work) Bill claims to have discovered a very fast factorization algorithm using shift registers, which he refuses to publish. While I haven't seen the algorithm, I believe he may well be right.
Bill Payne's claim to having discovered a faster factorization algorithm than the current state of the art, allows us to invoke the oft discussed mechanisms for the author to prove this ability without divulging the algorithm, and then proceed to sell the algorithm to the highest bidder, whilst minimizing his chances of being killed. I am sure many here remember various past discussions which were based on the "what if" question: one has discovered a fast factorization algorithm and our aims as discoverer are to: - maximise price for selling algorithm - minimise chance of being killed by the NSA to silence one - proving that we posses a fast algorithm Minimising our chances of being killed would seem to rely on: - posting our sale via BlackNet (ie posting anonymously) - having a disclosure mechanism in place which will be invoked on the eventuality of our premature death in an unfortunate `accident' Bill Payne seems to have already blown the first option in disclosing his identity. His dilemma is now that if the highest bidder is the NSA, they may kill him afterwards to prevent a release of the algorithm. This is where a robust disclosure mechanism in event of premature death would be useful. I hope Bill has invested in such a plan. Maximise price for selling algorithm: hold out for the highest bidder. Or perhaps sell to multiple parties with NDAs (would NDAs be sufficient to protect such valuable information?) Are there any reasons why Bill should be refusing to divulge the algorithm? Perhaps he is waiting for a higher bid. What is the current highest bid? What about alternate motives? Perhaps he is not interested in money, but rather in proving NSA incompetence? Or if Bill doesn't in fact have an algorithm, what would be the motives for falsely claiming that he does? Is he working for the NSA to spread FUD? Lastly proving that Bill has a fast algorithm (or acess to some nice hardware at NSA). Several RSA public key challenges are posted and Bill posts the factorization of the public key. There are conveniently pre-published RSA challenges in the form of rsa.com's RSA factoring challenge with multiples of two primes ranging in sizes going up in steps of 10 in decimal digits. It would I think provide best assurance if challenges of both sorts were broken, in that the RSA challenges have been available for some time, and Bill could have been working on RSA 140 for the last 3 years or whatever. So, Bill what size challenge in bits would you like to break first? I'll post one of your desired bit size. Adam -- Now officially an EAR violation... Have *you* exported RSA today? --> http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/ print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<> )]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`