From: pgut001@cs.auckland.ac.nz (Peter Gutmann)
Date: Tue, 20 May 1997 21:48:01 +0800
To: hal@rain.org
Subject: Re: Public Key Break Paper
Message-ID: <86413527217449@cs26.cs.auckland.ac.nz>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


>John Young, <jya@pipeline.com>, writes:
>>In early April we posted a message which referred to William H. Payne's paper
>>"Public Key Cryptography is Easy to Break."
>
>First, it is not a general attack on public key cryptography, but rather it is
>a specific method for attacking RSA.
>
>Second, I remember seeing this algorithm discussed on sci.crypt in the past,
>probably in 1996.
 
There was also a response/rebuttal to this paper in RSA's Ciphertext
newsletter, Vol.2, No.1 (Summer 1994), p.9, "Public Key Cryptography is Not
Easy to Break" which shows that it's not nearly as easy as the author of the
original paper thinks.
 
(I had another look at the unbalanced RSA proposal in the Autumn 1995
 CryptoBytes as I was trying to find the above article, did anyone ever do
 anything with unbalanced RSA or was it just left as a curiosity?).
 
Peter.