From: Adamsc@io-online.com (Adamsc) To: "Adamsc" <Adamsc@io-online.com>, "Lucky Green" <shamrock@netcom.com> Cc: "cypherpunks@toad.com" <cypherpunks@toad.com> Date: Sat, 05 Oct 96 00:05:11 -0700 Subject: Re: Can we kill single DES?

. . . snip . . .

I guess that was kind of ambigous. What I meant was any protocal/system where money is changing hands protected only by DES. That's what I meant by "like digicash". I don't even know if such a beast exists, but was suggesting that anything involving weakly protected money would be a good target because it highlights the vulnerability and would get media attention. - # Chris Adams <adamsc@io-online.com> | http://www.io-online.com/adamsc/adamsc.htp # <cadams@acucobol.com> | send mail with subject "send PGPKEY" "That's our advantage at Microsoft; we set the standards and we can change them." --- Karen Hargrove, Microsoft (quoted in the Feb 1993 Unix Review editorial)

I think any protocol even similar to one used in a financial type transaction, protected by DES would be a good target. The press could say that DES, the same algorithm used to protect financial transactions, has been broken. Hal Finney provided the target data in the last couple of these distributed cracks, I believe. Sounds like there needs to be much more involvement in this one, because of the number of cycles required. The doling out of keys will be a bigger job, also. If a 100 Mhz Pentium takes 4133 years, then I guess 4133 Pentiums takes 1 year. One year is too long to prove the point of weakness. ------------------------------------------ To unsubscribe, send to majordomo@toad.com unsubscribe cypherpunks in the message body, not the subject line. Note: Don't send to list (Perry-gram risk!)