New Crypto product & other ramblings

[baum@newton.apple.com (Allen J. Baum)]

I think the only way to prevent Clipper is pre-emptively.

The advantages of Clipper are twofold:
 Gov't volumes may drive the price down
 The Algorithm is fast, and the silicon required to implement it is small.
Modular arithmetic is (belief here, not fact) bigger, slower, and more
expensive.

There is enough knowledge, experience, and money on this mailing list to
design an encryption chip to compete against Clipper.

It would be better if we could just buy them- maybe that will happen.

SGS-Thompson has just announced a smart-card chip with  Modular Arithmetic
Processor (ST16CF54) developed by an Israeli company, Fortress U&T Ltd.
It's optimized for 256 and 512bit exponentiations, but can handle 1024 bit.

It sounds like this is just for public key signature verification- it can't
encrypt or decrypt at high speeds.

Anyone know more about this product? (ref. EEtimes 2/14/94 pg 20)

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* Allen J. Baum            tel. (408)974-3385    *
* Apple Computer, 20525 Mariani Ave,  MS 305-3B  *
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