From: mccoy@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Jim McCoy)
Date: Thu, 22 Apr 93 21:59:40 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: New Algorithm...
In-Reply-To: <19930422204625.1.MEYER@OGHMA.MCC.COM>
Message-ID: <9304230459.AA18293@tigger.cc.utexas.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text


> Date: Thu, 22 Apr 1993 15:46-0500
> From: Peter Meyer <meyer@mcc.com>
> 
>     Date: Thu, 22 Apr 1993 15:07 CDT
>     From: "Perry E. Metzger" <pmetzger@lehman.com>
> 
>     "Haywood J. Blowme" says:
>     [Lots about some J. Random Companies encryption chip]
> 
>     All fine and well, but since we have IDEA already, why should we want
>     it? For virtually all applicatons these days other than fully
>     encrypting network traffic, software is fine. DES implementations in
>     software can handle 1.5 Mbit/s on reasonable machines. [...]
> 
[...]
> 
> 
> There are lots of other things to be considered besides the algorithm
> itself when designing good encryption software, e.g. if someone
> accidentally yanks out the power cord to the computer during decryption
> do you kiss goodbye to the data?

Well, what if I need to the capability of doing 5-10 Mbyte/s?  I am still
haisng out a few design details of a "secure" BSD using encryption of the
filesystem before I hit the code and right now this particular issue is one
that I have still not worked out.  I need it in hardware.  Software is just
not fast enough and I a not sure how much work it will require to get a DES
card to do E(K1,D(K2,E(K1,x))) if I want to use 128 bit keys.

Does anyone know if there is a hardware implementation of IDEA or another
algorithm of suitable cryptographic strength available in a card or chip?
Then again, maybe I could use a clipper chip...   (big ;-)

jim