My April Fool's Day spoof was a success, by my own standards at least. Thanks for the personal notes sent to me. I decided last night to forward it to sci.crypt and sci.math, where it got at least one serious response (i.e., someone who didn't get the joke, at least not until the end) and a reasonably funny followup by David Sternlight himself. Sternlight (whom I mentioned as "Bowdark") showed himself not be utterly lacking in sense of humor. I sent this follow-up out tonight. Newsgroups: sci.crypt,sci.math Path: netcom.com!tcmay From: tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May) Subject: Re: RSA Broken by the Russians? Message-ID: <tcmayCnM14A.2Ks@netcom.com> Followup-To: sci.crypt,sci.math Date: Sat, 2 Apr 1994 02:19:22 GMT Yes, it was an April Fool's Day spoof. Yes, I wrote it. (Some folks wrote to me, asking where I got it from.) I'm writing here to make a couple of points. First, it was Stephen Wolfram's actual suggestion, a couple of years ago, after the USSR imploded, that we try to recruit mathematicians and programmers from what he surmised must exist: a secret city of Soviet cryptographers. It probably exists. We did it at Los Alamos, they did it with their rocket scientists and others (Akademogorodok exists), so why not put their version of NSA a bit off the beaten track? Note that our own NSA is within a stone's throw of the Baltimore-Washington Parkway. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that their experts were ensconced somewhere in the Urals. I tried to acknowledge Steve with my comments. By the way, so far as I know, no word has come out on whether he was right in this speculation. (Maybe some of the Russians he does in fact have working at Wolfram are these folks? Naw...) Second, Kolmogorov did basic work on information theory, probability, and statistics. One has to assume he had ties to the Soviet cryptography effort (about which little has been written about, so far). If anyone in Russia could have seen public key methods coming, he is a candidate. No evidence that he or any other Russian did, though. Third, my references to Denning and Sternlight were perhaps not riotously funny (though I didn't aim for a rioutously funny tone). Especially in light of David Sternlight's excellent follow-up here....never let it be said that David lacks a sense of humor. The Denning reference was to her own comments about spending a weekend or so trying (and failing, not surprisingly) to crack the Skipjack algorithm. (Real ciphers often take years to break, as with the knapsack algorithm, recent crunching of DES, etc.). Fourth, the "Many Worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics does exist, and leads to approaches such as I described. It's also a hypothetical way to ensure one's wealth: simply bet everything you own at 1000-to-1 odds and then commit suicide in all universes in which you lose. Not very convincing, I agree. Hans Moravec writes about this in his "Mind Children," 1987. Finally, I used the headers and format of a real article in the ClariNet system, then made modifications. Given that the Supreme Court has recently ruled in favor of "fair use" for satire, I hope my version of "2 Live Crew meets RSA" does not get my sued. (I could just kill myself in all realities in which Brad sues me....) --Tim May -- .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."