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- Newsgroups: sci.crypt
- Path: sparky!uunet!wupost!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!news.acns.nwu.edu!news.ils.nwu.edu!mccoy
- From: mccoy@ils.nwu.edu (Jim Mccoy)
- Subject: Re: DES (Was: Re: 800MHz
- Message-ID: <1993Jan10.050811.3740@ils.nwu.edu>
- Sender: usenet@ils.nwu.edu (Mr. usenet)
- Nntp-Posting-Host: aristotle.ils.nwu.edu
- Organization: The Institute for the Learning Sciences
- References: <1444.204.uupcb@ssr.com> <1993Jan9.163011.23230@csi.uottawa.ca>
- Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1993 05:08:11 GMT
- Lines: 28
-
- In article <1993Jan9.163011.23230@csi.uottawa.ca> cbbrowne@csi.uottawa.ca (Christopher Browne) writes:
- > [regarding the ability of the NSA to break DES encoded messages...]
- >
- >
- >If that $56 figure is faintly accurate, then I expect that the NSA
- >must have some rather high-speed hardware, probably specialized to
- >DES, that costs quite a bit less than anyone expected. I would have
- >expected a somewhat higher bill.
-
- Well, to the best of my knowledge the NSA has one of the largest
- collections of supercomputers (Y-MPs, etc.) in the world. This is thier
- job after all, to crack codes. In all the various conspiracy theories and
- other guesses regarding DES and the NSA, it should be noted that DES was at
- one time used for secure encryptin of files for some branches of the
- government (the "standard" in DES... :) and was decertified for this role
- as scheduled. Few ciphers will last forever. In time even the 1024 bit
- public keys people consider secure now will be crackable for $56.
-
- jim
-
-
-
-
- --
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