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The following archive was created by hippie-mail 7.98617-22 on Fri Aug 21 1998 - 17:20:46 ADT
Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com)
Tue, 21 Jul 1998 15:08:38 -0400
At 1:44 PM -0400 on 7/21/98, Xcott Craver wrote:
> False. Ever hang around sci.crypt recently? Lotta free
> snake-oil, perhaps never to be sold commercially, given out
> by none-too-bright folks convinced that they are crypto
> HEROES for implementing their divine wisdom. They don't want
> money, just immortality.
A nit. You don't think that they hope their "wisdom" is commercially
fungible, you're kinda missing the whole point of meglomania. Believe me, I
know. ;-).
It seems to me that commercial viability is the ultimate reduction to practice.
> You seem to be confusing the cipher itself with software
> products which do not adequately implement it.
No, I'm not. I'm saying that anyone who sells DES now, in light of recent
physical, replicable, *scientific* evidence, is selling snakeoil. Life is
hard, but them's the facts, ma'am.
> You also
> don't seem to realize that 3DES _is_ DES, the cipher,
> adequately implemented.
No, 3DES is DES, the cryptographic *component*, adequately implemented.
DES, if sold as a standalone cipher, is now snake oil.
> Anyone will agree with you that the keyspace of DES is
> way too small.
Yup. It makes it as secure, within an order or two of financial magnitude,
as a Caesar cipher.
> But I simply can't imagine going before an
> audience of cryptographers, say at a conference, and declaring
> DES snake-oil.
Fine. I tell you what. I'll do just that. <plug-mode> I'm going to be the
luncheon speaker, at 12:30 - 2PM on Wednesday, September 2, at the USENIX
workshop on Commerce in Boston. </p-m>
I'll stand up, right there in front of people like Bruce Schneier, Dan
Geer, Scott Guthery, and Bennet Yee, and say that DES is DED. I promise.
I'll even do it twice. I'm speaking at another Boston conference on
electronic commerce later the same month, and I'll do it then.
Happy?
Wanna bet that, by then, a mere one month or so from now, upon some cool
reflection of the astronomical financial consequences of further single-DES
deployment, most people will wonder what all the shouting was about and
agree with me that anyone who sells DES is selling snake oil?
> Depending on whose definition you use, this
> is tantamount to calling DES's designers ignorant frauds.
No more than calling Caesar a fraud (okay, maybe for other interesting
reasons :-)), or Jefferson, or anyone else who invented a cipher which
worked for a while but was made obsolete by progress.
Look at it this way. If you tried to sell me a Japanese Purple machine
right now and told me it was state of the art, you would be a fraud,
selling me snake oil. In 1943, of course, you wouldn't have been.
Cryptography, as has been said before many times, is economics.
Economics, like the rest of reality, is not optional. Anyone who knowingly
sells DES for any serious cryptographic purpose, especially any serious
*financial* purpose, is selling snake oil, pure and simple. Sometimes the
market breaks against you. Life is hard.
DES is DED.
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>
The following archive was created by hippie-mail 7.98617-22 on Fri Aug 21 1998 - 17:20:46 ADT