breaking RSA in hardware (was Re: Comparing Cryptographic Key Sizes II)

[Adam Back]

Peter Trei <trei at process.com> writes:
> > [DES breaking]
>
> [useful stats]
>
> So, to summarize:
> 
> Using GNFS, on clients with 128M of memory, you could factor a 512
> bit modulus in 28,000 MIPS years. With 500,000 MIPS years, you could
> factor a 600 bit modulus.
> 
> Using QS, in 500,000 MIPS years you could factor a 512 bit modulus on
> machines with modest memory requirements.

Remarkably close to my original figure :-) (same as DES I said, you
estimate DES to be 475,000 MIPS).  So, even though GNFS is faster, if
we don't have the hardware, it'll be better to use QS because using
GNFS whilst continually paging will be even worse.

> The effects of memory speed and bandwidth would slow things down
> somewhat.

Yup.

With DES software is not at all an efficient way to break DES,
compared to a Wiener machine.  Unfortunately the press releases have
had very little to say about the true cost of breaking DES with
hardware.  

Perhaps it would be interesting to look at the economics of a well
funded attacker breaking a 512 bit RSA key.  If we asume that they
would do it in software, and had to buy the machines, would you be
better to buy fewer workstations with 128Mb or lots with 16Mb.  Factor
of 17 speed up using GNFS acording to your estimates of DES, and
Lenstra's for GNFS RSA.

So perhaps we're looking at motherboard $100, cpu $100, PSU+case $100
+ 16Mb RAM $100 = $400.  The same, but with 128Mb $1100.

So that's a 1100 / 400 = 2.75 ratio.  Clearly buying the larger memory
PCs is the way to go.

Overall GNFS is 6x cheaper it would appear.

However, really the interesting question is how much would it cost to
break RSA in hardware.  How expensive would it be to build a custom
hardware machine to break RSA.  What building blocks would be needed.
How much memory.  What would be the most efficient approach.

Would it be cost effective to use NTTs RSA chip?  What would be the
most efficient way to distribute the memory.

Adam
-- 
Have *you* exported RSA today? --> http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/

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