From: John Gilmore <gnu@toad.com>
Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 16:46:19 -0700 (PDT)
To: interesting-people@cis.upenn.edu, cypherpunks, gnu
Subject: Re: IP: - Biham/Shamir Differential Fault Analysis of DES, etc
In-Reply-To: <3.0b36.32.19961018135058.0076412c@linc.cis.upenn.edu>
Message-ID: <199610182345.QAA20225@toad.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Note that this attack requires physical access to the DES chip, to
stress it so it will fail.  It works great against "tamper-proof"
devices such as smart cards.  It doesn't work against encryption
happening at any distance from the attacker (e.g. across the network).
It doesn't work against stored information like PGP-encrypted
email messages either.

However, it might be possible to use the attack by beaming disruptive
energies (heat, electrons, microwaves, etc) at a computer which is
doing a lot of encryption, while simultaneously monitoring that
computer's activity across a network.

	John