From: smb@research.att.com
Date: Wed, 29 Sep 93 11:36:30 PDT
To: Marc Horowitz <marc@GZA.COM>
Subject: Re: Easy cracking
Message-ID: <9309291833.AA29821@toad.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


	 >> The same kind of thing happened at Sun, except with the
	 >> secure rpc stuff.  Had a guy send mail saying, "I know your
	 >> two primes."  Sun replied, "No way."  (And lauged internally.)

	 I'm not sure this is how it happened, but the person (maybe there's
	 more than one?) who did this is a cypherpunk, who will identify
	 himself if he wants.  He also wrote a paper on this.  The first
	 version of the paper had the private key at the top of the first page,
	 but it got removed because certain spooks got upset.

??  As far as I know, Sun's secure RPC uses Diffie-Hellman with a
192-bit modulus.  LaMacchia and Odlyzko solved the discrete log problem
for that size, but there's no single private key to disclose.

For those who are interested, the reference is

@article{nfscrack,
   author = {Brian A. LaMacchia and Andrew M. Odlyzko},
   journal = {Designs, Codes, and Cryptography},
   pages = {46--62},
   title = {Computation of Discrete Logarithms in Prime Fields},
   volume = {1},
   year = {1991},
  xnote = "11211-900629-12TM"
}