From: tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)
Date: Fri, 8 Apr 94 11:51:16 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: (fwd) Re: RSA Broken by the Russians?
Message-ID: <199404081851.LAA23176@mail.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


That April Fool's Day joke I did about RSA being broken by the
Russians has generated 25 responses on sci.crypt and sci.math (where I
posted it after sending it out to this list).

(Someone added soc.culture.soviet to the dist list.)

Here's a recent one, which indicates I guessed fairly accurately that
Kolmogorov was involved, or his methods were. The Wolfram hypothesis,
noted to me by Eric Hughes and confirmed by Wolfram, is also
supported.

--Tim

Newsgroups: sci.crypt,sci.math,soc.culture.soviet
Subject: Re: RSA Broken by the Russians?
Message-ID: <1994Apr7.163939.31350@husc14.harvard.edu>
From: verbit@coolidge.harvard.edu (Misha Verbitsky)
Date: 7 Apr 94 16:39:38 EDT
Distribution: world
Organization: Sozialistisches Patienten Kollektiv


In article <GENE.94Apr6161116@insti.physics.sunysb.edu> gene@insti.physics.sunysb.edu (Eugene Tyurin) writes:
>>>> "MV" == Misha Verbitsky <verbit@widder.harvard.edu> writes:
>
>MV> This secret city probably exists, but the mathematical quality of
>MV> Soviet secret cryptography is extremely low.  First of all, KGB
>MV> did not try to recruit graduates of Universities (at least as far
>MV> as I know).

>Well, may be I'm awfully wrong, but in the Moscow University there was
>a special "Department of Structural Linguistics" (or something like
>this) which was rumoured to be a KGB crypto-college. I remember (from
>the time I was studying for the admission exams) that their math tests
>were as hard as the ones for Math, Physics departments. I can guess
>from this that the quality of students was the same.

	Well, dept. of Structural Linguistic was a section
	of philology department. It was organized by the famous
	logicist V. A. Uspensky who was friendly with Tartu
	(and Moscow) school of structural linguistic. The intent
	was, Lotman and Co. used (or believed they use) Kolmogorov's
	notions of entropy and complexity in philology,
	so philologists who wanted to study structuralism
	needed to learn some mathematics. For a while,
	MSU Str. Ling. dept. was the best philology school 
	in the country. Now, after a serie of pogroms
	it still remains one of the best school (mostly
	because after those pogroms all MSU philology department
	went awry). Since I was friendly with some of
	Uspensky's students I know the situation firsthand.
	The students of Str. Ling. dept. were 80% girls, they
	did't know (or like) math, and most of the math lecturers
	(after Uspensky) were Jews and/or dissidents. 
	I doubt strongly KGB would use many people connected
	with Str. Ling. dept., though I know some whom they
	offered cooperation. Anyway, Str. Ling. dept. have had
	no classified courses, unlike most of other MSU depts.	

	The funny sci.math related detail: Uspensky read
	calculus on Str. Ling. dept. for years. After a while
	he became bored and instead of usual calculus program
	offered the non-standard analysis course. Poor
	girls, who naturally hated mathematics, were 
	completely distressed, because now they could 
	not even make they boyfriends to do their problem 
	sets. 

	Misha.

P. S. I apologise for Vulis reposting every second article
that I post to sci.math. I hope you stay amused. There is no 
way to make Vulis stop this practice, as far as I understand.
I think he developed a crash on my net.personality.