[44014] in Cypherpunks
Re: Cypherpunk Certification Authority
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (James Black)
Mon Nov 27 20:28:49 1995
Date: Mon, 27 Nov 1995 20:22:13 -0500 (EST)
From: James Black <black@sunflash.eng.usf.edu>
To: Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>
Cc: cypherpunks@toad.com
In-Reply-To: <199511271952.LAA26633@ix3.ix.netcom.com>
Hello,
On Mon, 27 Nov 1995, Bill Stewart wrote:
> Signatures often have known, or easily guessed, plaintext in them,
> like the signer's name or ID number, or various header fields
> such as X.509's equivalent to ----- BEGIN PGP ....
If the signature is padded with random junk on the end, then it makes
it harder to do a known text attack. There was a message a few days ago
by Anderson and someone else (in England) that dealt with weaknesses in
some encryption protocols. It was good to read.
> DES isn't worthless. It's a bit weak, but not worthless.
Even though he didn't have proof Bruce Schneier stated in "Applied
Cryptography 2nd Ed" that the NSA might have a machine that can crack DES
in 15 mins, and maybe as low as 3-5, as one was built and sold. The book
can explain it more, as I am doing this from memory.
Take care and have fun.
==========================================================================
James Black (Comp Sci/Comp Eng sophomore)
e-mail: black@eng.usf.edu
http://www.eng.usf.edu/~black/index.html
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