Ames/ clipper compromised?
Adam Shostack
adam at bwh.harvard.edu
Tue Mar 29 13:58:10 PST 1994
The skipjack review committe wrote:
| 3. Susceptibility to Brute Force Attack by Exhaustive Search
[...]
| An implementation of SKIPJACK optimized for a single processor on
| the 8-processor Cray YMP performs about 89,000 encryptions per
| second. At that rate, it would take more than 400 billion years to
| try all keys. Assuming the use of all 8 processors and aggressive
| vectorization, the time would be reduced to about a billion years
Could someone explain why jumping to 8 processors knocks the
time down by a factor of 400, instead of a factor of 8? Is the 400
billion years a load of crap, intended to sound more impressive than
8?
adam
--
Adam Shostack adam at bwh.harvard.edu
Politics. From the greek "poly," meaning many, and ticks, a small,
annoying bloodsucker.
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