[18129] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: solving the wrong problem
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Peter Gutmann)
Tue Aug 9 12:16:25 2005
X-Original-To: cryptography@metzdowd.com
X-Original-To: cryptography@metzdowd.com
From: pgut001@cs.auckland.ac.nz (Peter Gutmann)
To: cryptography@metzdowd.com, perry@piermont.com,
pgut001@cs.auckland.ac.nz, zenadsl6186@zen.co.uk
In-Reply-To: <BF1D4E06.B039A%zenadsl6186@zen.co.uk>
Date: Tue, 09 Aug 2005 21:46:06 +1200
Peter Fairbrother <zenadsl6186@zen.co.uk> writes:
>Peter Gutmann wrote:
>> Peter Fairbrother <zenadsl6186@zen.co.uk> writes:
>>> Didn't the people who did US/USSR nuclear arms verification do something
>>> very similar, except the characterised surface was sparkles in plastic
>>> painted on the missile rather than paper?
>>
>> Yes. The intent was that forging the fingerprint on a warhead should cost as
>> much or more than the warhead itself.
>
>Talking of solving the wrong problem, that's a pretty bad metric - forging
>should cost the damage an extra warhead would do, rather than the cost of an
>extra warhead. That's got to be in the trillions, rather than a few hundred
>thousand for another warhead.
The cost was US$12M per warhead. I think that's sufficient.
Peter.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
The Cryptography Mailing List
Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo@metzdowd.com
