Re: provably hard PK cryptosystems

[Gary Howland <gary@systemics.com>]

Asgaard wrote:
> 
> On Sun, 22 Sep 1996, Timothy C. May wrote:
> 
> > Suppose a tile is placed at some place on the grid, and another tile
> > (possibly a different tile, possibly the same type of tile) is placed some
> > distance away on the grid. The problem is this: Can a "domino snake" be
> > found which reaches from the first tile to the second tile, with the
> > constraint that edges must match up on all tiles? (And all tiles must be in
> > normal grid locations, of course)
> 
> Intuitively (but very well not, I'm not informed enough to know)
> this might be a suitable problem for Hellman's DNA computer, the
> one used for chaining the shortest route including a defined
> number of cities?

This is starting to sound like Wired magazine.

I fail to see *any* (non educational) use for these DNA "computers", let
alone a cryptographic use - sure, they may be massively parallel, but
what's the big deal?  I can now perform a calculation a million times
faster than I could yesterday? (something I personally doubt, but will
agree to for sake of the argument).  I could get the same results
writing a cycle stealing Internet java app, so what's all the fuss
about?

L8r d00d2

DNA Mutant
--
pub  1024/C001D00D 1996/01/22  Gary Howland <gary@systemics.com>
Key fingerprint =  0C FB 60 61 4D 3B 24 7D  1C 89 1D BE 1F EE 09 06