[To cypherpunks, copied to fight-censorship (which I'm not on).] In article <Pine.SOL.3.95.970719232017.28206B-100000@orion.means.net>, Robert Hayden-0797-EMP-HSE <rhayden@orion.means.net> wrote:

Say this on the Fight Censorship list. Just FYI.

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: 19 Jul 1997 17:56:51 -0000 From: Secret Squirrel <nobody@secret.squirrel.owl.de> To: fight-censorship@vorlon.mit.edu Subject: NSA leak

WASHINGTON (AP) - In a rare moment of openness bordering on glibness, a senior official at the super-secret National Security Agency was overheard at a White House press conference concerning current bans on the export of encryption technology saying, "It would not take any twelve times the age of the universe to decrypt a 128-bit message. Thirty-three minutes is more like it."

Observers at the press conference indicated that the senior official's remarks were intended to be overheard by those standing nearby, who included White House officials, reporters, and a troupe of girl scouts from Lundane, Illinois.

Uh-huh. Unless the Administration has granted a secret Executive Order repealing the Laws of Physics for the NSA, the above statement, if true, would imply one of the following things: 1. The NSA has a reversible computing machine with at least 2^128*128 bits = 5.44*10^39 bytes = 4.95*10^27 TB of memory. Hardly. 2. Their cracker changes the state of 2^128 bits in 33 minutes. This is being extremely generous; it assumes (in the style of Schneier) that they only have to increment a counter through each possible key, and that _checking_ the key is free. Let T be the temperature at which they run their computer. Again, be very generous, and assume that their computer is in deep space, with an ambient temperature of about 3 Kelvins, and that their super-fast processor does not heat up the system, so T = 3K. Then their cracker would require 2^128 * k * T of energy in 33 minutes (k is Boltmann's constant, 1.38*10^-23 J/K). This works out to a power requirement of 2^128*k*(3K)/(33*60s) = 7.12 TW (terawatts). This seems also unlikely. (Actually, for all I know, terawatt power sources may exist; that's out of my field. Please let me know if this is the case. I just know that at my rates, 7.12 TW for 33 minutes (at about $.10/kWh) would cost $392 million each time they wanted to crack a key (half that in the average case; and of course, their electrical rates are probably lower than mine...). Again, this is being _extremely_ generous in the energy consumption calculations. Note also that this dollar figure depends only on the size of the key and your power rate; the 33 minute figure cancels out.) There could be some tradeoff in the above two cases. 3. They have a quantum computer, or some alien technology, or something else we know pretty much nothing about. Given this choice, I would vote for #3. :-) However, I'd go out on a limb and say that the NSA guy was simply lying (or that the anecdote itself is mistaken). - Ian

(Actually, for all I know, terawatt power sources may exist; that's out of my field. Please let me know if this is the case.[)]

I don't know about continuous sources, but the "Star Wars" SDI research came up with a storage system that could discharge terawatts for something in the seconds/minutes(/hours?) range. Basically a large superconducting coil buried in the ground, it would feed the ground-based lasers. Not that this really impacts your analysis.. I suspect the 33 minutes is probably in reference to a dictionary attack of some sort, rather than an exhaustive keysearch. However, don't rule out quantum computers. I think they're doable.. a few months in an optics lab, maybe I can come up with a cell.

Unless the Administration has granted a secret Executive Order repealing the Laws of Physics for the NSA,

I was at CERN when Clinton was elected and brought in his new administration. His DOE head (Hazel O'Leary?) made a speech to a group of physicists in which she indicated her belief that physical laws weren't much different than "real" laws.. and that if we found them troublesome, well, she had access to the folks in DC who could get an amendment passed. Stunned silence. -- Frederick G.M. Roeber