From: Patrick May <pjm@spe.com>
Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 14:07:52 -0800 (PST)
To: Dan Geer <geer@OpenMarket.com>
Subject: Re: The Upcoming DES Challenge
In-Reply-To: <85263054520588@cs26.cs.auckland.ac.nz>
Message-ID: <199701092146.NAA02693@gulch.spe.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Dan Geer writes:
 > 
 >     I'm still a bit nervous about what the reaction will be though
 >     - won't the US government (and anyone else pushing DES) be able
 >     to say "It took 10,000 Pentiums several weeks, noone would
 >     bother doing that, so it's safe"...
 > 
 > this seems a good moment to remind ourselves
 > that we will never know as much about another
 > cipher as we know about DES.
 > 
 > ipso facto, i'd like to simply use the efficiency
 > of price discovery by auction and see what I can
 > buy the DES-key-of-your-choice for.  my bet: there
 > are a lot of interesting DES keys available for
 > less than $10K

     This is an excellent idea.  Do the rules of RSA's challenge allow
for bribing the holder of the contest keys?  What a headline --

          "DES Challenge Broken In 15 Minutes"

Then there's the rubber hose method....

Patrick May
(who does not advocate the initiation of force for a mere $10k)