[80063] in Cypherpunks
DES challenge news (fwd)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ulf =?ISO-8859-1?Q?M=F6ller?=)
Wed May 14 20:14:25 1997
To: cypherpunks@algebra.com
Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 00:07:46 +0200 (GMT+0200)
From: 3umoelle@informatik.uni-hamburg.de (Ulf =?ISO-8859-1?Q?M=F6ller?=)
Reply-To: 3umoelle@informatik.uni-hamburg.de (Ulf =?ISO-8859-1?Q?M=F6ller?=)
Distributed key cracking efforts have been discussed in detail on
cypherpunks and coderpunks for quite some time. A Swedish group
trying to solve RSADSI's DES challenge chose to ignore the results.
Here is what they got (from RISKS 19.14):
>Date: Mon, 12 May 1997 17:56:54 +0200 (MET DST)
>From: Thomas Koenig <ig25@mvmap66.ciw.uni-karlsruhe.de>
>Subject: DES challenge news
You may remember RISKS-19.09, in which I discussed the risks in a
network-wide attack on the RSA DES challenge: The Swedish group at
http://www.des.sollentuna.se/ didn't give out its source, so the client
could, in fact, do anything, such as crack a master EC-card key. The reason
given was client integrity.
Well, a month after this, the promised source code release has not happened.
Instead, it appears that somebody disassembled part of the client, made a
version that reported fake "done" blocks, and then sent these to the
servers.
Moral? Don't ever think that nobody can read compiled code. Don't try to
run a cooperative effort like this in a closed development model.
Thomas Koenig, Thomas.Koenig@ciw.uni-karlsruhe.de, ig25@dkauni2.bitnet.
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