I found the following on Usenet, and was curious as to the validity of the
statements made. If anyone has any other information regarding this,
please post or mail it private. I don't know if any of it already floated
through here, but thought you might be interested in it.
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Seen on the PRIVACY FORUM mailing list:
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Date: Wed, 8 Sep 93 13:13:12 -0400
From: "Alan (Gesture Man) Wexelblat" <[email protected]>
Subject: DES is a dead dog...
From: Philip Zimmermann <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: DES Key Search Paper (fwd)
Michael Weiner presented a paper at Crypto93 that describes a fast
DES key search engine that uses a special inside-out DES chip that
he designed. This chip takes a single plaintext/ciphertext pair
and quickly tries DES keys until it finds one that produces the
given ciphertext from the given plaintext. Weiner can get these
chips made for $10.50 each in quantity, and can build a special
machine with 57000 of these chips for $1 million. This machine can
exhaust the DES key space in 7 hours, finding a key in 3.5 hours on
the average. He works for Bell Northern Research in Ottawa, and
says they have not actually built this machine, but he has the chip
fully designed and ready for fabrication.
This is a stunning breakthrough in the realization of practical DES
cracking. BTW-- note that PEM uses straight 56-bit DES.
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