Bank transactions on Internet

[Jüri Kaljundi]

On Mon, 8 Apr 1996, Perry E. Metzger wrote:

> The rest of this article is a direct quotation from Blaze et al in the
> paper they wrote on minimal safe key lengths. Note that they show that
> it is easy enough to make a cracker that costs eight cents (CENTS!)
> per solution, and not that hard to get it down to 1/10th of a cent!
>
> }    There is no need to have the resources of an institution of higher
> }education at hand, however.  Anyone with a modicum of computer
> }expertise and a few hundred dollars would be able to attack 40-bit
> }encryption much faster.  An FPGA chip --- costing approximately $400
> }mounted on a card --- would on average recover a 40-bit key in five
> }hours.  Assuming the FPGA lasts three years and is used continuously
> }to find keys, the average cost per key is eight cents.

This AT&T Orca or FPGA chip or whatever the name is, is it freely
available device and how easy would it be to get one? I am not sure I
understand what it is, but even in case you would have to write the code
to crack RC4 and program the chip yourself, that does not seem very hard
thing to do. What I am asking is if this cracking device would be
available to anyone with 400$ and some computer knowledge?

Jüri Kaljundi
jk at digit.ee