[117467] in Cypherpunks
Re: NSA key in MSFT Crypto API
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (steve bryan)
Fri Sep 3 17:28:30 1999
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In-Reply-To: <19990903140127170@nomvs.lsumc.edu>
Date: Fri, 3 Sep 1999 16:03:40 -0500
To: csvcjld@nomvs.lsumc.edu
From: steve bryan <sbryan@vendorsystems.com>
Cc: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
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Reply-To: steve bryan <sbryan@vendorsystems.com>
> > >NSAKEY is 1024 bits RSA. D.net does not stand a chance of breaking it.
>
>The NSA (like everyone else) must think no one (except possibly the NSA)
>can break 1024 bit RSA keys.
And a short time earlier you wrote:
At 9:26 am -0500 9/3/99, csvcjld@nomvs.lsumc.edu wrote:
>Can the NSA's private key be derived from the public key in Microsoft's
>code?
So a short time ago you posed a question that could be interpreted as
an indication you don't even know the basics of public key
cryptography. You follow this with a content free assertion that
"everyone else" doesn't have your insight into what can and cannot be
broken. The first quoted remark which you appear to be denigrating
simply reports the capacity of D.net based on the currently available
algorithms, bandwidth, and spare processors. In fact using:
At 8:07 pm +0000 8/26/99, Steve Mynott wrote:
----- Forwarded message from Paul Leyland <pleyland@microsoft.com> -----
>For the old 140-digit NFS-record, this effort was estimated to be
>2000 mips years. Extrapolation using the asymptotic complexity formula
>for NFS would predict approximately 14000 mips years for RSA-155. The gain
>is caused by an improved application of the polynomial search method used
>for RSA-140.
you could look up the asymptotic complexity formula and see what it
predicts for 1024 bit number factorization (155 digit = 512 bit). I'm
sure it would look as hopeless today as RSA-155 looked in the late
70's. I mention that because I don't doubt there will be improvements
to the state of the art. But I don't subscribe to the notion that
mathematicians at the NSA are 20 years ahead of active academic
research.
