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The following archive was created by hippie-mail 7.98617-22 on Fri Aug 21 1998 - 17:20:42 ADT
Myron Lewis (mrlewis@keygen.com)
Mon, 20 Jul 1998 23:09:00 -0400
I'd like to ask all you "experts" out there if you think it's possible that
DES can be resurrected using something like the ASK ToolKit (tm).
If you don't know anything about the ASK ToolKit (tm), you can find out
about it at www.keygen.com. You can also download the ToolKit and request a
copy of the KeyGen DES/ASK Demo FTP.
While the ASK ToolKit (tm) may look and smell like "snakeoil" (anything we
didn't think of ourselves), you may find after a careful and unbiased
inspection that it tastes like ambrosia.
Myron Lewis,
President,
KeyGen Corporation.
mrlewis@keygen.com
Phone: 781-860-0108
Fax:
Visit our Website: www.KeyGen.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
To: John Lowry <jlowry@bbn.com>; Xcott Craver <caj@math.niu.edu>;
gnu@toad.com <gnu@toad.com>; cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
<cypherpunks@cyberpass.net>; dcsb@ai.mit.edu <dcsb@ai.mit.edu>; e$@vmeng.com
<e$@vmeng.com>; cryptography@c2.net <cryptography@c2.net>;
CodherPlunks@toad.com <CodherPlunks@toad.com>
Date: Monday, July 20, 1998 6:59 PM
Subject: The Cost of Snakeoil (was Re: John Gilmore and the Great
InternetSnake Drive)
>$684.93 is the cost of snakeoil.
>
>That's how much it costs to break a DES key right now.
>
>Take $250,000, divide it by 2, and that gives you the amortized cost of
>Gilmore's DES cracker over a single "half-life", one iteration of Moore's
>Law. Divide that $125k by the year and a half that half-life takes
>(365*1.5), and multiply it by three days, and you get the now proven,
>*demonstrated* cost of a broken DES key, which is $684.93. Modulo the
>percentage of keyspace searched when the Gilmore hit paydirt, whatever that
>was.
>
>
>$684.93
>
>Not much, is it?
>
>The cost of anything is the foregone alternative.
>
>And, of course, that cost falls by half every 18 months.
>
>And, of course, we haven't even looked at economies of scale, yet, have we?
>National technical means, and all that.
>
>
>So, once again, I repeat: as of last week, DES *is* snakeoil, no matter its
>venerable pedigree. (See my .sig, below, to see what I think about
>venerable ideas.)
>
>
>So, anyone who sells DES in an application requiring *any* serious
>security, *especially* for commercial financial operations, is selling
>snakeoil. It's that simple.
>
>Barring some kind of cryptanalytic prestidigitation, 3DES will probably
>work fine, because it has a decent keyspace, which DES doesn't have. And,
>note, I didn't say anything bad about 3DES, because it's apparently strong
>enough for that reason alone.
>
>But, Ladies and Germs, Boys and Girls, DES itself is now "DED".
>
>It is "kid sister" code. It has "X"es for eyeballs. It is defunct. It is an
>ex-protocol.
>
>May it rest in peace.
>
>Cheers,
>Bob Hettinga
>-----------------
>Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@philodox.com>
>Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/>
>44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
>"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
>[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
>experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
>The Philodox Symposium on Digital Bearer Transaction Settlement
> July 23-24, 1998: <http://www.philodox.com/symposiuminfo.html>
>
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
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>http://www.hyperion.co.uk/ info@hyperion.co.uk
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
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>http://www.c2.net/ stronghold@c2.net
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>
The following archive was created by hippie-mail 7.98617-22 on Fri Aug 21 1998 - 17:20:42 ADT