support for "crack DES"

[jim bell]

At 01:26 PM 10/3/96 +0000, Omegaman wrote:
>Considering the situation -- considering that RSA has even signed on 
>to this scheme -- I'd have to say that I don't give a rat's ass what 
>Bill Gates claims.  If Micro$oft bucks the system, I'll gladly 
>applaud their stand.  
>        
>The situation is not good at all.
>
>Cracking DES (whether distributed or through a hardware crack, or 
>both!) seems critical at this point.

Just remember that it would be far better to make the crack look easy, than 
to make it look hard.  quantity 9000+, $1,000 Pentiums for a year (plus 
maybe $500,000 in electricity) looks "hard."   1000 dedicated chips (whether 
they be FPGA or custom or...) for 1.5 months or so looks "easy."

The latter crack looks far more likely to be repeated.  The former is 
OBVIOUSLY a stunt.


Jim Bell
jimbell at pacifier.com