Does any body know anything about this?

[nobody@cypherpunks.ca (John Anonymous MacDonald)]

Is this just more snakeoil or is this real?

<<<<<<<< FORWARDED MESSAGE >>>>>>>>
From: Ross Anderson <Ross.Anderson@cl.cam.ac.uk>
Date: Fri, 20 Sep 1996 09:05:28 +0100
Subject: Seminar in Cryptology and Computer Security

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                  University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory

                                EXTRA SEMINAR

SPEAKER:        Matt Blaze
                AT&T Research

DATE:           Monday 23rd September 1996 at 11.30 am

PLACE:          Room TP4, Computer Laboratory

TITLE:          SYMMETRIC-KEY CIPHERS BASED ON HARD PROBLEMS

A useful principle in cipher design is to reduce or at least relate
closely the cryptanalysis of the cipher to some long-studied problem
that is believed to be difficult.  Most public-key ciphers follow this
principle fairly closely (e.g., RSA is at least similar to factoring).
Modern symmetric-key ciphers, on the other hand, can rarely be reduced
in this way and so are frequently designed specifically to resist the
various known cryptanalytic attacks.  In this informal talk, we examine
a simple cipher primitive, based on Feistel networks, for which recovery
of its internal state given its inputs and outputs is NP-complete.  We
outline simple and efficient block- and stream- cipher constructions
based on this primitive.

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The regular Michaelmas term seminar series will resume on the 8th
October with a series of talks on Tuesday afternoons at 4.15 PM in room 
TP4, Computer Laboratory, Pembroke Street, Cambridge. A list of speakers
will be circulated shortly.

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