From: droelke@spirit.aud.alcatel.com (Daniel R. Oelke)
Date: Thu, 17 Aug 95 14:25:23 PDT
To: aba@dcs.exeter.ac.uk
Subject: Re: Silly technical question from a non-technical person
Message-ID: <9508172055.AA15978@spirit.aud.alcatel.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



> 
> - For DES I think so, asked for others opinions, this might be the
>   next one to die, big project but possibly doable with lots of keys
>   at once
> 

But, what is a good DES target to attack??  SSL was a great target
because it is both visible and because it has a well
defined open specification that made it easy to determine 
exactly what to attack (unlike Microsoft Access).

I know someone who *used* to be in the ATM transaction 
business, but is no longer.  Is the code from a credit card
reader DES encrypted?  We could be possible "tap" the serial
port between the reader and the modem and get a byte 
stream in that manner.... but then again, my knowledge
of those beasts is pretty limited.

Dan

------------------------------------------------------------------
Dan Oelke                                  Alcatel Network Systems
droelke@aud.alcatel.com                             Richardson, TX
http://spirit.aud.alcatel.com:8081/~droelke/