Re: 40-bit RC5 crack meaningless??

["Mark M." <markm@voicenet.com>]

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On Thu, 6 Feb 1997, Vin McLellan wrote:

> >Date: Thu, 30 Jan 1997 20:10:36 -0500
> >To: "Wright Larry" <Wright_Larry@bah.com>
> >From: "Paul A. Strassmann" <paul@strassmann.com>
> >Subject: Further to Goldberg's Cracking Accomplishments
> >Gentlemen:
> >
> >As I suspected (see earlier private comment), the
> >highly promoted RSA cracking contest offered
> >a number of clues that ordinarly would not be
> >volunteered by  info-terrorists or info-criminals to
> >IW Defense teams.
> >
> >These clues made the cracking significantly easier,
> >because it made it possible to eliminate an enormous
> >range of possible searches.

Hmm..., word size, number of rounds, and key size are "clues"?  At least he
won't be able to make this claim when DES is cracked.  OTOH, he might consider
a known IV to be information not available under "infowar conditions."
Apparently, "Info Warriors" aren't supposed to be familiar with open standards.

> >Clue #3: (a  giveway!)
> >
> > " ... For each contest, the unknown plaintext message is preceded by three
> >   known blocks of text that contain the 24-character phrase "The
> >   unknown message is:  .....".

He considers a known-plaintext attack to be "a  giveway![sic]"?  It seems that
this guy could use a few clues himself.


Mark
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