I found the following on Usenet, and was curious as to the validity of the statements made. If anyone has any other information regarding this, please post or mail it private. I don't know if any of it already floated through here, but thought you might be interested in it. --- Seen on the PRIVACY FORUM mailing list: ----------------------- Date: Wed, 8 Sep 93 13:13:12 -0400 From: "Alan (Gesture Man) Wexelblat" <wex@media.mit.edu> Subject: DES is a dead dog... From: Philip Zimmermann <prz@columbine.cgd.ucar.EDU> Subject: Re: DES Key Search Paper (fwd) Michael Weiner presented a paper at Crypto93 that describes a fast DES key search engine that uses a special inside-out DES chip that he designed. This chip takes a single plaintext/ciphertext pair and quickly tries DES keys until it finds one that produces the given ciphertext from the given plaintext. Weiner can get these chips made for $10.50 each in quantity, and can build a special machine with 57000 of these chips for $1 million. This machine can exhaust the DES key space in 7 hours, finding a key in 3.5 hours on the average. He works for Bell Northern Research in Ottawa, and says they have not actually built this machine, but he has the chip fully designed and ready for fabrication. This is a stunning breakthrough in the realization of practical DES cracking. BTW-- note that PEM uses straight 56-bit DES. --- Christian Void /T71 | "I don't like it, and I'm sorry I | VMResearch, Inc. cvoid@netcom.COM | ever had anything to do with it." | P.O. Box 170213 Tel. 1+415-807-5491 | -Erwin Schrodinger (1887-1961) | SF, CA 94117 * PGP v2.3a Public Key Available Via Finger *