Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!decwrl!nsc!taux01!cyosta
From: cyosta@taux01.UUCP (Yossie Silverman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Encryption
Message-ID: <886@taux01.UUCP>
Date: 14 Aug 88 06:45:48 GMT
References: <7596@trwrb.UUCP>
Reply-To: taux01!cyosta@nsc.UUCP (Yossie Silverman)
Organization: National Semiconductor (Israel) Ltd.
Lines: 38

In article <7596@trwrb.UUCP> carlile@trwrb.UUCP (Donald E. Carlile) writes:
.Whatever happened to Public Key encryption? (If memory serves it was also 
.refered to as RSK after the initials of its developers).
.
.Did it turn out to take too much time or memory?  Did its developers have
.a big patent problem?  Is it still viable?
.
.Has anyone ever developed a Mac implementation?
.
.Thanks,
.Don Carlile
.{ihnp4,hplabs,decvax}!trwrb!carlile

Well, there is PC implementation.  It includes encrypted disk-io, mail
and digital signatures.  It has the fastest known implementation of RSE
(note, not RSK) in the world (according to its developers).  I don't think
you  will find it in the stores as no government that I know of is willing
to allow a non-decryptable (by them) code into the public hand, especially
the progressive American government, but mine (the Israeli) as well.  I don't
think they ever bothered to do a port to the Mac, no comercial value.  The
algorithms of RSE are quite simple to master, but they require some very 
heavy number crunching and thus, on any current CPU, heavy optimizing.  The
developers claimed to have a set of very very fast large number math package.
If you want more information, please mail me directely, I will forward
further information.  An anacdote:  When IBM first came out with the DES
(Data Encryption Standard) idea, they had a key with 128 bits (well, 112).
The US Govt did some heavy thinking and decided that their computers (circa
1970) couldn't crack a cypher in a resonable amount of time and decreed that
the key should be 64 (well, 56) bits long.  As a result, today, anyone at
home can crack a DES cypher on his mac with a days worth of CPU.  (Your
bank card has your "secret" number encoded in it with DES, concider someone
stealing it and decoding the number...).  And you expect the Govt to okey the
use of PKE by the general public, heh!
-- 
Yossie Silverman                                   What did the Caspian sea?
National Semiconductor Ltd. (Israel)				- Saki
UUCP: taux01!yossie@nsc.UUCP
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