From: Thomas Womack <thomas.womack@merton.oxford.ac.uk>
Date: Mon, 12 Jan 1998 18:59:40 +0800
To: cypherpunks <cypherpunks@toad.com>
Subject: Re: More on the DES II contest.
Message-ID: <01bd1f47$5beb0570$409001a3@mc64.merton.ox.ac.uk>
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>My greatest fear with DES II is that if d.n finds the key
>early in the search, they may decide to sit on it until
>just before the 540 hour deadline. If they are the only
>group with a credible chance of finding the key (as far as
>I know, this is the case), then their payback is maximized
>by by this tactic, since the time limits for the June
>contest are determined by the speed with which the key is
>found in January.


But the question is one of how fast the key-search can be made, not of when
the key would be found - and I though the d.n website displayed a figure for
keys-per-second. That it takes the network not very long to find the DES key
0x0809182395f8ee isn't a very interesting piece of data; the keys-per-second
figure is more useful.

Tom