At 1:29 pm -0500 on 2/16/97, John Young wrote:

Paul Bell wrote:

...

does anyone know what has happened to DFA, and the people who just a few months ago were publishing such encouraging results?

There seems be sustained investigation of DFA, offensive and defensive, by Biham and Shamir, by Anderson and Kuhn, by the Bellcore team, by Quisquater and others.

However, the smartcard manufacturers appear to have a role in dampening publicity about the ongoing research, or at least diminishing the claims of effectiveness of DFA.

At FC97 <http://www.offhsore.com.ai/fc97/> ;-), we have the following paper at 10:45 on Tuesday February 22nd:

Fault Induction Attacks, Tamper Resistance, and Hostile Reverse Engineering in Perspective David P. Maher (AT&T Labs--Research, Murray Hill, NJ, USA)

I'm not sure whether which side of the fight this paper will be on, but it could be easy to speculate from the title. :-). On the other side of the coin, we invited Shamir to come talk about his DFA work, but eventually it turned out that he couldn't make the trip. Maybe next year. We *did* get Ron Rivest, though. (Shameless plug: Our *other* invited speakers are Simon L. Lelieveldt of the Dutch central bank, who'll talk about the security of electronic money, and Peter Wayner, the author of "Digital Cash", who'll talk about money laundering.) (*Really* shameless hucksterism: Since AA *didn't* strike, they're offering mucho cheapseat deals to places like Anguilla and St. Maarten, a short ferry ride away, even if you make your reservations on really short notice. Like, maybe to go to FC97? Nudge, Nudge. We can also get you *cheap* hotel rooms when you get there... Wink, wink, wink.) Meanwhile, the FC97 workshop (which runs the week prior to the conference itself) starts on Monday, and, having weathered the American Airlines non-strike, Ian Goldberg, Adam Shostack and Gary Howland are now all down in Anguilla getting things set up. I don't think people can get to *that* in time, but, hey, you could *try*, I suppose. Better get packing, though, 'cause time is running out. The workshop starts at 09:00 tomorrow. <http://www.offshore.com.ai/fc97/> ;-). Cheers, Bob Hettinga ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com), Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "Never attribute to conspiracy what can be explained by stupidity." -- Jerry Pournelle The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/rah/ FC97: Anguilla, anyone? http://www.ai/fc97/