(fwd) Re: RSA Broken by the Russians?

[tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)]

My April Fool's Day spoof was a success, by my own standards at least.
Thanks for the personal notes sent to me.

I decided last night to forward it to sci.crypt and sci.math, where it
got at least one serious response (i.e., someone who didn't get the
joke, at least not until the end) and a reasonably funny followup by
David Sternlight himself. Sternlight (whom I mentioned as "Bowdark")
showed himself not be utterly lacking in sense of humor.

I sent this follow-up out tonight.


Newsgroups: sci.crypt,sci.math
Path: netcom.com!tcmay
From: tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)
Subject: Re: RSA Broken by the Russians?
Message-ID: <tcmayCnM14A.2Ks@netcom.com>
Followup-To: sci.crypt,sci.math
Date: Sat, 2 Apr 1994 02:19:22 GMT


Yes, it was an April Fool's Day spoof. Yes, I wrote it. (Some folks
wrote to me, asking where I got it from.)

I'm writing here to make a couple of points.

First, it was Stephen Wolfram's actual suggestion, a couple of years
ago, after the USSR imploded, that we try to recruit mathematicians
and programmers from what he surmised must exist: a secret city of
Soviet cryptographers. It probably exists. We did it at Los Alamos,
they did it with their rocket scientists and others (Akademogorodok
exists), so why not put their version of NSA a bit off the beaten
track? Note that our own NSA is within a stone's throw of the
Baltimore-Washington Parkway. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that
their experts were ensconced somewhere in the Urals.

I tried to acknowledge Steve with my comments. By the way, so far as I
know, no word has come out on whether he was right in this
speculation. (Maybe some of the Russians he does in fact have working
at Wolfram are these folks? Naw...)

Second, Kolmogorov did basic work on information theory, probability,
and statistics. One has to assume he had ties to the Soviet
cryptography effort (about which little has been written about, so
far). If anyone in Russia could have seen public key methods coming,
he is a candidate. No evidence that he or any other Russian did,
though.

Third, my references to Denning and Sternlight were perhaps not
riotously funny (though I didn't aim for a rioutously funny tone).
Especially in light of David Sternlight's excellent follow-up
here....never let it be said that David lacks a sense of humor. The
Denning reference was to her own comments about spending a weekend or
so trying (and failing, not surprisingly) to crack the Skipjack
algorithm. (Real ciphers often take years to break, as with the
knapsack algorithm, recent crunching of DES, etc.).

Fourth, the "Many Worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics does
exist, and leads to approaches such as I described. It's also a
hypothetical way to ensure one's wealth: simply bet everything you own
at 1000-to-1 odds and then commit suicide in all universes in which
you lose. Not very convincing, I agree. Hans Moravec writes about this
in his "Mind Children," 1987.

Finally, I used the headers and format of a real article in the
ClariNet system, then made modifications. Given that the Supreme Court
has recently ruled in favor of "fair use" for satire, I hope my
version of "2 Live Crew meets RSA" does not get my sued.

(I could just kill myself in all realities in which Brad sues me....)

--Tim May

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