[2985] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Turing Bombe story
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Steve Bellovin)
Fri Jul 17 13:26:57 1998
To: "Scott G. Kelly" <skelly@redcreek.com>
cc: Carl Ellison <cme@acm.org>, Steve Reid <sreid@alpha.sea-to-sky.net>,
Marcus Leech <Marcus.Leech.mleech@nt.com>, cryptography@c2.net
Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 01:12:20 -0400
From: Steve Bellovin <smb@research.att.com>
In message <35AE7E00.AEF5534@redcreek.com>, "Scott G. Kelly" writes:
> So, just out of curiosity, could someone build a similar (specialized)
> machine for DES... or skipjack?
A DES-cracking machine? Well, it's now been done -- John Gilmore
and Paul Kocher designed and built a brute-force DES cracker.
The project cost $250,000, according to Markoff's story in the
NY Times -- see http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/98/07/biztech/articles/17encrypt.html
for details.
My strong congratulations to the team that did it -- and my sympathies
to anyone who is still using single DES, after years of warnings
that it wasn't secure against precisely this form of attack.
