Hack Lotus?

[Jiri Baum]

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Hello cypherpunks at toad.com
  and daw at beijing.CS.Berkeley.EDU (David A Wagner)
 
...
> Hack Lotus?  Please do.
...
> If the receiving Lotus Notes program does verify that the high 24 bits
> are escrowed correctly, then anyone can verify that, so in 2^24 trials,
> I can recover the high 24 bits, and with 2^40 more trials, I can recover
> the high 40 bits.  Therefore 2^40 + 2^24 trials should suffice to hack
> Lotus if this is how it works.
...


I have no idea how Lotus actually does this, but:

How about a salt determined by the forty bit part?

Ie if the key is s.g (s=secret, g=gaked), the BARF (="Big-brother Access
Required Field") could contain Encrypt(Hash(s).g,BigBrother).

The receiving end, knowing both s and g, could re-calculate the
BARF and only function when it's correct. Unless it's been hacked too,
in which case it could barf when the BARF is correct :-)


Would that work or have I missed something? As I said, I've no idea
what Lotus actually does.


Jiri
- --
If you want an answer, please mail to <jirib at cs.monash.edu.au>.
On sweeney, I may delete without reading!
PGP 463A14D5 (but it's at home so it'll take a day or two)
PGP EF0607F9 (but it's at uni so don't rely on it too much)

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