[2181] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: The secret message is...
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Donald E. Eastlake 3rd)
Wed Feb 25 16:44:07 1998
Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 16:02:48 -0500 (EST)
From: "Donald E. Eastlake 3rd" <dee@cybercash.com>
To: Rick Smith <rsmith@securecomputing.com>
Cc: "Trei, Peter" <ptrei@securitydynamics.com>, cryptography@c2.net,
markham@securecomputing.com
In-Reply-To: <v03007801b11a179604f0@[172.17.1.150]>
Why is that interesting? Macs are not particularly efficient for this. NSA
has its own chip foundary and remember how some years ago Russia bought
100,000 DES chips from a West German supplier and never was really able to
explain where they went... Look at the experts reports for what it costs a
major government to break a DES key.
Donald
On Wed, 25 Feb 1998, Rick Smith wrote:
> Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 13:05:06 -0600
> From: Rick Smith <rsmith@securecomputing.com>
> To: "Trei, Peter" <ptrei@securitydynamics.com>, cryptography@c2.net
> Cc: markham@securecomputing.com
> Subject: Re: The secret message is...
>
> This is really interesting information. Without the results of these folks
> getting together and solving this problem, we civilians wouldn't have a
> handle on how much work is *really* involved in cracking a real crypto key.
>
> My office mate immediately pulled out pencil and paper to compute the cost
> to crack a single DES key. Assuming the computing equivalents are correct,
> the processing power required equals 68,859 Macintosh PowerPC 604e/200s.
> Using the MacWarehouse catalog sitting on my desk, I find that they're
> offering 604e/200 clones for $52 a month. So, here's the math:
>
> 68,859 (Macs for a month) * $52 (per month leasing)
> = $3,580,668 to crack a single DES key
>
> VERY interesting statistic. It reminds me of the punchline of that old,
> sexist party joke: "We've already established what you are, now we're just
> quibbling about your price."
>
>
> Rick.
> rsmith@securecomputing.com Secure Computing Corporation
> "Internet Cryptography" at http://www.visi.com/crypto/ and bookstores
>
>
>
=====================================================================
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