[67001] in Cypherpunks
Re: Can we kill single DES?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Lucky Green)
Tue Oct 1 20:18:31 1996
Date: Tue, 1 Oct 1996 16:53:54 -0700 (PDT)
From: Lucky Green <shamrock@netcom.com>
To: Peter Trei <trei@process.com>
Cc: cypherpunks@toad.com, trei@process.com
In-Reply-To: <199610012026.NAA28151@toad.com>
On Tue, 1 Oct 1996, Peter Trei wrote:
> Since it looks like the US government will be allowing the export of
> 56 bit espionage-enabled software, it's time to kill single DES.
>
> As some of you will recall, a while back I wondered aloud about the
> feasibility of brute-forcing DES on general purpose machines, ala the
> RC4-40 crack last year.
[...]
> Yes, I KNOW that a hardware based cracker is a LOT more efficient,
> but between the up-front cost and the difficulty of design and production,
> it's less likely to get done. (Still if someone wants to buy me a nice
> FPGA board, I'll see what I can do).
I understand that *two* independent efforts cracking single DES using FPGAs
are currently being set up. If the parties whish to come forward, my offer
to donate to this cause still stands.
--Lucky
