[2190] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Efficient DES Key Search
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Daniel R. Oelke)
Wed Feb 25 22:22:49 1998
Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 19:16:57 -0600
From: Dan.Oelke@aud.alcatel.com (Daniel R. Oelke)
To: cryptography@c2.net
>
> >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.
>
The companies that *could* spend the cash for a completely custom
asic, just to make their point, aren't the big players crypto realm,
OR like the regulations the way they are now. Most companies
that make crypto products just aren't that big and need to
spend that ~$1M on R&D, marketing, etc. (like PGP until a few
buyouts ago).
Now, if you could fit it in an FPGA - then it would be cheap.
This would put it in the realm of people who will do things just
to make a point. A couple of people could each buy their
own FPGA and seriously boost their ranking at distributed.net
One of these days I'll convince my brother to "publish" his
thesis on the net. It has a DES cracker design in
VHDL. He just couldn't quite get the synthesis to make
it fit on a single FPGA. That was a year or two ago. Better
software tools and bigger FPGA's may mean it could work now.
If anyone is interested, they can find a paper copy in RIT's library...
Dan
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dan Oelke - droelke@aud.alcatel.com Alcatel Telecom, Richardson, TX
"Left foot, left foot, right foot, right.
Feet in the morning and feet at night." - The Foot Book by Dr. Seuss
