[2189] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Efficient DES Key Search
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Rick Smith)
Wed Feb 25 20:04:22 1998
In-Reply-To: <3.0.3.32.19980225184026.03220ee0@postoffice.worldnet.att.net>
Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 18:00:16 -0600
To: Will Rodger <rodger@worldnet.att.net>, cryptography@c2.net
From: Rick Smith <rsmith@securecomputing.com>
Cc: markham@securecomputing.com
At 6:40 PM -0500 2/25/98, Will Rodger wrote:
>We've been hearing about all these super-efficient, super cheap,
>_theoretical_ cracking devices for years now. Surely supporters of US
>policy have been ridiculing these assertions for as long as they've been
>made. ...
>My question: when will someone produce one? If I were looking for to
>produce evidence to support decontrol, I'd be working on one now.
I suspect that the custom built, special purpose solution isn't worth it
for the demonstration. Our trivially conceived off the shelf solution is
already within three orders of magnitude of the cost/performance of the
custom built solution. A more careful design and costing effort might
reduce the cost/performance difference to two orders of magnitude or less,
making the custom built solution unnecessary for a dramatic demonstration.
