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Re: Can we kill single DES?
On Tue, 1 Oct 1996 16:27:18 -6, Peter Trei wrote:
>1. Is this a good idea? What will happen if DES becomes perceived
> as insecure?
That's Declan's department (and other non-clueless journalists - declan is
just the most visible). If it get's widespread and the target is something
like Digicash, it'd get picked up by the Crime/Snoozeweek crowd.
>2. What is the probability of success required to make it worth doing?
Judging by the people on the list, about 50%.... <g>
>3. What would be the consequences of failure?
Depends on the type of failure - ranging from dreadful to minor.
>4. What other platforms than NT/Win95/Pentium should be considered?
> I could write a Unix demon version, but unless it's tailored for the
> cpu, a lot of efficency is lost
> (The aggregate number of idle cycles available for testing is the
> crucial number).
A Linux port (Pentium) would be *very* good - lots of Linux people tend to by
pro-cpunk. Ditto for OS/2. And who knows, if you hyped the business
aspects enough you might even find IBM or some other large corp willing to
donate some time on large system.
>5. What's a good target? Ideally, we need a plaintext/ciphertext pair,
ecash, ecash, ecash! Given all the attention anything that 'will give your
VISA number to evil hackers' gets, this is an important target. It's serious
and newsworthy.
>6. What other incentives can be used to recruit machines?
Maybe give away a Pentium to the person who finds it? (Assuming donations
from list members, of course)
# Chris Adams <[email protected]> | http://www.io-online.com/adamsc/adamsc.htp
# <[email protected]> | send mail with subject "send PGPKEY"
"That's our advantage at Microsoft; we set the standards and we can change them."
--- Karen Hargrove, Microsoft (quoted in the Feb 1993 Unix Review editorial)