From: Vin McLellan <vin@shore.net>
Date: Wed, 12 Aug 1998 11:39:35 -0700 (PDT)
To: "Nobuki Nakatuji" <bd1011@hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: Mitsubishi Electric Corp. has decided to make its MISTYpublic key......
In-Reply-To: <19980812064612.2435.qmail@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <v04003a04b1f78e3c98af@[198.115.179.81]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 2:46 AM -0400 8/12/98, Nobuki Nakatuji wrote:
>Mitsubishi Electric Corp. has decided to make its MISTY public key
>encryption algorithm available free of charge in an attempt promote its
>use.

	Sir: Your report is at least partially incorrect, and inevitably
misleading. Melco's MISTY is not a PKC, it is a suite of two secret-key
block ciphers using 64-bit blocks and 128-bit keys. I don't know details
about the availability of MISTY code from Melco or what license
arrangements are now available, but at least one of the MISTY algorithms
(MISTY1) was published as an IETF RFC (and Melco has always said it hoped
to make MISTY a standard.)

	The Melco websites don't seem to offer any new infomation about
MISTY licenses or pricing, and I believe the Mitsubishi staff is still on
company-wide vacation. You may wish to review your source info.

-----
      Vin McLellan + The Privacy Guild + <vin@shore.net>
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