On Mon, 8 Apr 1996 sameer@c2.org wrote:

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Suddenly some banks here in Estonia have decided that they must start offering banking services over Internet already during the next months. What worries me is that some of them are talking about using 40-bit SSL as the main security mechanism.

Please point these banks to Apache-SSL (http://www.algroup.co.uk/Apache-SSL/). They can run SSL without using 8-cent RC4.

What is the use of 128-bit server, as there are still no 128-bit WWW clients freely available in Europe? (Workhorse has 128-bit SSL, but the client is still far from perfect). Of course I believe that SSL server with source code available is still much more secure, as your own consultants can have a look at the code, that's why I personally would rate Apache-SSL higher than commercial applications like Thawte consulting Sioux. Jüri Kaljundi jk@digit.ee

"JR Weaver" writes:

Is it really that easy to break 40-bit? Don't you need access to a "fair amount of cpu power" to brute force crack 40bit?

The rest of this article is a direct quotation from Blaze et al in the paper they wrote on minimal safe key lengths. Note that they show that it is easy enough to make a cracker that costs eight cents (CENTS!) per solution, and not that hard to get it down to 1/10th of a cent! Full paper at: ftp://ftp.research.att.com/dist/mab/keylength.txt } There is no need to have the resources of an institution of higher }education at hand, however. Anyone with a modicum of computer }expertise and a few hundred dollars would be able to attack 40-bit }encryption much faster. An FPGA chip --- costing approximately $400 }mounted on a card --- would on average recover a 40-bit key in five }hours. Assuming the FPGA lasts three years and is used continuously }to find keys, the average cost per key is eight cents. } } A more determined commercial predator, prepared to spend $10,000 }for a set-up with 25 ORCA chips, can find 40-bit keys in an average of }12 minutes, at the same average eight cent cost. Spending more money }to buy more chips reduces the time accordingly: $300,000 results in }a solution in an average of 24 seconds; $10,000,000 results in an }average solution in 0.7 seconds. } } As already noted, a corporation with substantial resources can }design and commission custom chips that are much faster. By doing }this, a company spending $300,000 could find the right 40-bit key in }an average of 0.18 seconds at 1/10th of a cent per solution; a larger }company or government agency willing to spend $10,000,000 could find }the right key on average in 0.005 seconds (again at 1/10th of a cent }per solution). (Note that the cost per solution remains constant }because we have conservatively assumed constant costs for chip }acquisition --- in fact increasing the quantities purchased of a }custom chip reduces the average chip cost as the initial design and }set-up costs are spread over a greater number of chips.)

This AT&T Orca or FPGA chip or whatever the name is, is it freely available device

If you mean "do they sell them commercially" the answer is yes.

What I am asking is if this cracking device would be available to anyone with 400$ and some computer knowledge?

You would have to be smart but yes. There are many such devices, by the way. .pm

Is it really that easy to break 40-bit? Don't you need access to a "fair amount of cpu power" to brute force crack 40bit?

I remember reading a recent paper at this URL: http://theory.lcs.mit.edu/~rivest/bsa-final-report.ascii They mentioned a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA), specifically a board-mounted AT&T Orca chip available for around $400. They said it could crack a 40-bit key in 5 hours (average). Sounds like anyone with root access on a major internet node could make a significant profit stealing credit card numbers. The FPGA sounds like a very interesting device, with quite a few legitimate uses... Has anyone out there seen one of these? (((cloaked sig file)))