From: Paul Bradley <paul@fatmans.demon.co.uk>
Date: Thu, 19 Jun 1997 21:22:31 +0800
To: ARTURO GRAPA YSUNZA <AGRAPA@banamex.com>
Subject: Re: Bullshit RE: HACKERS SMASH U.S. GOVERNMENT ENCRYPTION
In-Reply-To: <c=MX%a=_%p=BANACCI%l=CENTRALES/BARRANCA24/0001F962@MEX3976BCAOP1>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.91.970619091626.559A-100000@fatmans.demon.co.uk>
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> > "That DES can be broken so quickly should send a chill through the
> >heart of anyone relying on it for secure communications,"
> 
> I'm shitting bricks. No mention was made that only 25% of the keyspace
> was tested.

Not only that, but single DES with a 56 bit key is just not being used 
anymore in any company which has the slightest clue. If they can run a 
distributed crack on 3DES with independent subkeys then I`ll give them 
some attention.

I`m not downgrading the effort, Joe "wired reader" Sixpack doesn`t know 
the difference between DES, 3DES and his ass anyway, so it is a 
significant publicity stunt that will get normal non-specialist people 
thinking about the export laws, and about how quickly DES can be broken 
by the government if it can be broken by a few guys on the internet in 
months. All I am saying is that looking at it from a purely scientific 
point of view it is not a great cryptanalytic achievement, merely a PR stunt.

> Unfortunately some companies depend on BS to sell products. Glad to see
> C2Net is no different,

What did you expect?

        Datacomms Technologies data security
       Paul Bradley, Paul@fatmans.demon.co.uk
  Paul@crypto.uk.eu.org, Paul@cryptography.uk.eu.org    
       Http://www.cryptography.home.ml.org/
      Email for PGP public key, ID: FC76DA85
     "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey"