[4585] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
NY Times article on Shamir's public key breaking machine
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Martin Minow)
Sun May 2 02:10:13 1999
Date: Sat, 1 May 1999 18:35:17 -0700
To: cryptography@c2.net
From: Martin Minow <minow@pobox.com>
<<http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/05/biztech/articles/02encr.html>
gives a very superficial overview of a paper to be presented Tuesday
that describes a hardware attack on public key cryptography.
<bigger>"Researchers said that if his machine worked it would mean
that
cryptographic systems with keys of 512 bits or less -- that is, keys
less
than about 150 digits long -- would be vulnerable in the future, an
exposure that would have seemed unthinkable only five years ago. The
longer
1,024-bit keys that are available today would not be vulnerable at
present."
Martin Minow
minow@pobox.com
</bigger>
