From: "P. J. Ponder" <ponder@freenet.tlh.fl.us>
Date: Sun, 6 Oct 1996 12:54:51 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Can we kill single DES?
Message-ID: <Pine.OSF.3.91.961005213432.4115A-100000@fn3.freenet.tlh.fl.us>
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>From: Adamsc@io-online.com (Adamsc)
>To: "Adamsc" <Adamsc@io-online.com>, "Lucky Green" <shamrock@netcom.com>
>Cc: "cypherpunks@toad.com" <cypherpunks@toad.com>
>Date: Sat, 05 Oct 96 00:05:11 -0700
>Subject: Re: Can we kill single DES?

. . . snip . . .

>I guess that was kind of ambigous.  What I meant was any protocal/system
>where money is changing hands protected only by DES.   That's what I 
>meant by
>"like digicash".   I don't even know if such a beast exists, but was
>suggesting that anything involving weakly protected money would be a good
>target because it highlights the vulnerability and would get media 
>attention. -
>#  Chris Adams <adamsc@io-online.com>   | 
>http://www.io-online.com/adamsc/adamsc.htp
>#  <cadams@acucobol.com>		 | send mail with subject "send PGPKEY"
>"That's our advantage at Microsoft; we set the standards and we can 
>change them."
>   --- Karen Hargrove, Microsoft (quoted in the Feb 1993 Unix Review 
>editorial)
>

I think any protocol even similar to one used in a financial type 
transaction, protected by DES would be a good target.  The press 
could say that DES, the same algorithm used to protect financial 
transactions, has been broken.  

Hal Finney provided the target data in the last couple of these
distributed cracks, I believe. 

Sounds like there needs to be much more involvement in this one,
because of the number of cycles required.  The doling out of keys
will be a bigger job, also.  If a 100 Mhz Pentium takes 4133 years,
then I guess 4133 Pentiums takes 1 year.  One year is too long to
prove the point of weakness.

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