RE: HACKERS SMASH U.S. GOVERNMENT ENCRYPTION

[Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>]

At 03:35 PM 6/18/97 -0500, ARTURO GRAPA YSUNZA wrote:
>I actually got a kick out of reading the bullshit in the press release.
...
>You should have given credit to DESCHALL whose effort is be applauded.

I mostly agree with Arturo, especially about giving credit and
indicating how many machines were participating.
Publicity about how the Feds are trying to push
weak crypto on us is worthwhile - the timing was especially pleasant
given Kerrey's new anti-crypto bills in Congress.
Sameer's post did two things - hyped his own company (hmmm :-)
and provided an opportunity for good inflammatory rhetoric.

On the other hand, DES really is _much_ weaker than the DESCHALL
project indicates - Intel CPUs aren't at all tuned for DES cracking,
whereas a custom DES-cracker with similar horsepower could have
done the job a lot faster.  If I remember right, Wiener's design
used 64,000 chips, about as many as there were PCs working DESCHALL,
for a crack that would take hours instead of months.

		


#			Thanks;  Bill
# Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com
# You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto/pgp
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