From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com>
Date: Fri, 1 Mar 96 08:57:11 PST
To: Jonathon Fletcher <jonathon@japan.sbi.com>
Subject: Re: Nortel "Entrust"
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SUN.3.91.960301161135.11367M-100000@doe905f>
Message-ID: <199603011655.LAA21202@jekyll.piermont.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



Jonathon Fletcher writes:
>   Can anyone tell me anything about a product called "Entrust", by Nortel
> (Northern Telecom). The notes talk about the software using DES ("which
> employs a 56-bit key") so I guess it's single DES, not triple DES. It also
> mentions a proprietary algorithm called CAST. 
> 
>   Is this worthy of further investigation, or is it suspect ? What is 
> CAST, and would it be classed as snake oil ?

"Entrust" was built by Smart People. Of course, any given component of
it is only as strong as the underlying algorithms; you yourself are
probably aware of the problems associated with DES vs 3DES and such. I
would suggest examining the documents.

I don't know anything about CAST.

Perry