Bullshit RE: HACKERS SMASH U.S. GOVERNMENT ENCRYPTION

[Kent Crispin]

On Thu, Jun 19, 1997 at 09:21:59AM +0000, Paul Bradley wrote:
> 
> > > "That DES can be broken so quickly should send a chill through the
> > >heart of anyone relying on it for secure communications,"
> > 
> > I'm shitting bricks. No mention was made that only 25% of the keyspace
> > was tested.
> 
> Not only that, but single DES with a 56 bit key is just not being used 
> anymore in any company which has the slightest clue.

This is false, of course.  Many companies with the slightest clue use 
single DES.  Also, someone pointed out that the combined efforts 
probably had independently done 50% of the keyspace.

> If they can run a 
> distributed crack on 3DES with independent subkeys then I`ll give them 
> some attention.
> 
> I`m not downgrading the effort, 

This is false, too.  Doublespeak at it's finest.

>Joe "wired reader" Sixpack doesn`t know 
> the difference between DES, 3DES and his ass anyway, so it is a 
> significant publicity stunt that will get normal non-specialist people 
> thinking about the export laws, and about how quickly DES can be broken 
> by the government if it can be broken by a few guys on the internet in 
> months. All I am saying is that looking at it from a purely scientific 
> point of view it is not a great cryptanalytic achievement, merely a PR stunt.

It is a *GREAT* achievement on several fronts, crypto included. 
Another front that was equally important, IMO was as a demonstration
of what loosely coordinated distributed computing can do. 

Of course, it was also a PR stunt, and it is working on that front, 
as well.

-- 
Kent Crispin				"No reason to get excited",
kent at songbird.com			the thief he kindly spoke...
PGP fingerprint:   B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44  61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55
http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html