[617] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: RPK?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Gary Howland)
Mon Apr 21 18:05:25 1997
To: colin@nyx.net (Colin Plumb)
cc: dawson@world.std.com, cryptography@c2.net
In-reply-to: Your message of "Mon, 21 Apr 1997 12:34:22 MDT."
<9704211834.AA18857@nyx.net>
Date: Mon, 21 Apr 1997 20:49:58 +0200
From: Gary Howland <gary@systemics.com>
> *Yawn*. It's a combination of a discrete-log-over-GF(2^k) public key
> algorithm and an LFSR-based stream cipher. Because they use the same
> generator polynomials, they claim i's somehow "integrated" and new,
> but the relationship actually ends up making it weaker. The home-brew
> stream cipher has been tweaked (adding stuttering in various ways)
> to fix the more blatant problems that have been found, but there's
> nothing really new there.
>
> It's a cute idea which might be fun to play with, but it's definitely
> not worth paying for.
I think it's quite a nice algorithm. Given that it is based on LFSRs,
it is probably two orders of magnitude faster than RSA. This may well
be the only practical solution for a high volume ecash mint.
The source is available (in Delphi, I believe) for those that want to play.
Gary
--
pub 1024/C001D00D 1996/01/22 Gary Howland <gary@systemics.com>
Key fingerprint = 0C FB 60 61 4D 3B 24 7D 1C 89 1D BE 1F EE 09 06
