Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!ucsd!ames!amdcad!sun!pitstop!sundc!seismo!uunet!mcvax!ukc!cs.tcd.ie!csvax1!fmodwyer
From: fmodwyer@cs.tcd.ie (Frank O'Dwyer , ext. 1695)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Encryption
Message-ID: <8736@cs.tcd.ie>
Date: 18 Aug 88 20:21:00 GMT
References: <7596@trwrb.UUCP> <886@taux01.UUCP>
Organization: Computer Science Department, Trinity College Dublin
Lines: 26

In article <886@taux01.UUCP>, cyosta@taux01.UUCP (Yossie Silverman) writes:

> 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).  

How fast?  With what keylength?  

(b.t.w. I presume it's RSA you mean.  Stands for Rivest, Shamir, and
Adleman!)

> As a result, today, anyone at
> home can crack a DES cypher on his mac with a days worth of CPU.  	

What?  I may have missed something but unless there is a method
for breaking DES *without* an trying each and every key, then anyone at
home would have to be capable of generating and testing 8.3e+11 keys a second
to break DES in a day.
My humble DES implementation can do about 15 keys a second.  I would die
of old age before I cracked DES.

Diffie and Hellman have suggested that DES can be cracked in about 20 hrs
by using 1,000,000 DES devices in parallel.... Cost $20 m to $200m.
Not within reach of 'anyone at home'.

Unless you know a method which does not rely on exhaustive key search....