[107561] in Cypherpunks
RE: Duke/HP CPU average 3.75 hrs to crack 40-bit crypto
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Walter Burton)
Sun Jan 17 08:17:58 1999
From: Walter Burton <wburton@pipestream.com>
To: monte@dukenews.duke.edu
Cc: dennis@dukenews.duke.edu, cryptography@c2.net, cypherpunks@toad.com,
e-commerc@www.ispo.cec.be, Vin McLellan <vin@shore.net>
Date: Sun, 17 Jan 1999 07:54:20 -0500
Reply-To: Walter Burton <wburton@pipestream.com>
> Mr. Burton: The reason is simple. A. I am not deeply versed in
> cryptography and B. hence never heard of the "DES Cracker."
> Perhaps you could enlighten me for future reference? I'm a
> generalist science writer at Duke who was just assisting
> Dr. Kedem in getting the word out and he did not mention
> the DES Cracker to me.
>
> Regards, Monte
> <monte.basgall@duke.edu>
DES stands for "Data Encryption Standard." DES is the official
encryption algorithm of the U.S. government. It is also the standard
symmetric algorithm employed by most of the banking industry.
In July of 1998, the world-famous Electronic Frontier Foundation built a
(relatively inexpensive) machine that cracked DES-encoded data in less
than 3 days. See http://www.eff.org/descracker.html.
Sorry to come off sounding so captious. You had the scoop on a very
important story, and I was amazed that it's scope was as limited as it
was.
---
Walter S. Burton <mailto:wburton@pipestream.com>
For my PGP public key, send a message with the subject "get public key."
Fingerprint: 3E28 7C81 536C 92FE ED01 6B70 0E37 DB49 9F6C 8DF8
