[67385] in Cypherpunks
Re: Can we kill single DES?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Adamsc)
Sat Oct 5 04:47:29 1996
From: Adamsc@io-online.com (Adamsc)
To: "Adamsc" <Adamsc@io-online.com>, "Lucky Green" <shamrock@netcom.com>
Cc: "cypherpunks@toad.com" <cypherpunks@toad.com>
Date: Sat, 05 Oct 96 00:05:11 -0700
Reply-To: "Chris Adams" <adamsc@io-online.com>
On Fri, 4 Oct 1996 06:16:44 -0700 (PDT), Lucky Green wrote:
>> >1. Is this a good idea? What will happen if DES becomes perceived
>> > as insecure?
>>
>> That's Declan's department (and other non-clueless journalists - declan is
>> just the most visible). If it get's widespread and the target is something
>> like Digicash, it'd get picked up by the Crime/Snoozeweek crowd.
>Sorry, not a chance. The symmetric cipher used in Ecash is 3DES. Since
>DigiCash has the good fortune to be located in The Netherlands, full
>strength crypto can be (and is) used in all their products.
I guess that was kind of ambigous. What I meant was any protocal/system
where money is changing hands protected only by DES. That's what I meant by
"like digicash". I don't even know if such a beast exists, but was
suggesting that anything involving weakly protected money would be a good
target because it highlights the vulnerability and would get media attention.
# Chris Adams <adamsc@io-online.com> | http://www.io-online.com/adamsc/adamsc.htp
# <cadams@acucobol.com> | send mail with subject "send PGPKEY"
"That's our advantage at Microsoft; we set the standards and we can change them."
--- Karen Hargrove, Microsoft (quoted in the Feb 1993 Unix Review editorial)
