Re: Idle question...

[gtoal@an-teallach.com (Graham Toal)]

	From: Ian Farquhar <ifarqhar@laurel.ocs.mq.edu.au>

	I was compiling a list of crypto algorithms the other night, trying to
	produce a library of description documents for the algorithms, and an
	interesting but idle question hit me: what ever happened to RC1, RC3,
	MD1, MD3, A1, A2, A4, A6, and A7?

	Just wondering if anyone knows...

								Ian.

Any reason why you left out A5 above? :-) ...

>From gtoal Mon Jun 20 14:35:50 1994
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Didn't anyone note the A5 posting?
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Status: RO

Didn't anyone notice that someone posted a putative source code for
the secret A5 algorithm as used in GSM phones?  (It was on sci.crypt
xposted to uk.telecom, on Friday).  Seems someone was going to give
a talk on ways of hacking the algorithm, at some university, and he
got stomped on by CGHQ.  So another guy has come out in sympathy and
posted his reconstruction of the algorithm in C as reverse engineered
from a hardware description he received in a plain brown envelope!

This is *significantly* more of a coup on the net that the NSA handbook.

Now, all I need is for you guys to explain coherently *why* it's a
good coup and what the political implications are, and I'll feed the
story to the UK press.  (I don't think anyone here has it yet...)

G