Re: EFF misstatements in DeCSS brief

[Martin Minow <minow@pobox.com>]

At 22:20 +0000 2000.01.09, lcs Mixmaster Remailer wrote:
>
>You are overlooking the EFF's attempt to argue that the decryption
>algorithm could have been deduced without reverse engineering, requiring
>only "reasonable diligence", given the ciphertext and keys, and that this
>would be a "simple" task for a skilled cryptanalyst.

Not being a skilled cryptanalyst, I defer to others to determine
the difficulty represented by 4 GB of plaintext/cyphertext,
a 40 bit key, and the economic/technical constraints on consumer
hardware.

It should be noted (and was in the EFF brief) that reverse
engineering for the purposes of interoperability is legal
in Norway and cannot be rovoked by contract or license.
Eivind Eklund posted a note in Cypherpunks last week
and I confirmed it by reading and translating the original
Norwegian law text.

Martin Minow
minow@pobox.com