The Upcoming DES Challenge

[Patrick May]

Dan Geer writes:
 > 
 >     I'm still a bit nervous about what the reaction will be though
 >     - won't the US government (and anyone else pushing DES) be able
 >     to say "It took 10,000 Pentiums several weeks, noone would
 >     bother doing that, so it's safe"...
 > 
 > this seems a good moment to remind ourselves
 > that we will never know as much about another
 > cipher as we know about DES.
 > 
 > ipso facto, i'd like to simply use the efficiency
 > of price discovery by auction and see what I can
 > buy the DES-key-of-your-choice for.  my bet: there
 > are a lot of interesting DES keys available for
 > less than $10K

     This is an excellent idea.  Do the rules of RSA's challenge allow
for bribing the holder of the contest keys?  What a headline --

          "DES Challenge Broken In 15 Minutes"

Then there's the rubber hose method....

Patrick May
(who does not advocate the initiation of force for a mere $10k)