CDR: Re: why should it be trusted?

[jim bell]

----- Original Message -----
From: John Young <jya at pipeline.com>

> The question occurs: did PK crypto get leaked on purpose?
> How was it done?

It may not be exactly what you had in mind, but I personally _observed_ the
"leak" (to the public) of RSA, but I simply didn't recognize what it was at
the time!  I believe it was late January/early February 1977 (but I could be
off a couple of months) and it was the beginning of my second semester of my
freshman year at MIT.  Due to the location of my dorm, "East Campus," I
frequently walked by the mathematics department and its bulletin boards on
the main floor.  Usually bulletin boards like that are filled with grades,
test results, problem set answers, and things like that.  But at this point,
they had something that wasn't identifiably of any of these categories.
"Exponentiation", "modulo arithmetic," "prime numbers", etc.

I wish I could see the thing again.  I didn't spend a lot of time on it, at
the time, but I would have if I'd known what it was.

Jim Bell