[47688] in Cypherpunks
Lotus key breaking?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Thomas Grant Edwards)
Mon Jan 22 15:00:53 1996
From: Thomas Grant Edwards <tedwards@isr.umd.edu>
Date: Mon, 22 Jan 1996 14:50:32 -0500 (EST)
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Cc:
Hmmm...how long is the single private key of Lotus Notes? Is it time to
warm up the key-cracking net again?
VTW Billwatch #33 said that:
>LOTUS BLINKS IN INDUSTRY/NSA CRYPT STANDOFF
...
>On Wed, Jan. 17th, 1996, Lotus announced that it had increased the key
>length of its International version of the Lotus Notes product to 64
>bits. They did this by building in a back door for the Administration to
>use to decrypt any international traffic that it might desire to read.
>Although there are a lot of reasons why we think this is a terrible idea,
>the first one that springs to mind is the fact that the one public key that
>Lotus has embedded in all their software is a single point of failure
>for every International Lotus user throughout the world.
...
>You can find a copy of the Lotus press releases at
>http://www.lotus.com
