🚀 go-pugleaf

[] Regarding Re: NIST & RSA Data Security, Inc.;
[] jbuck@forney.berkeley.edu (Joe Buck) writes:

    jb> In article <9109121340.AA11810@lemming.webo.dg.com>, pds@lemming.webo.dg.com (Paul D. Smith) writes:
    |> A little later on in the article we find out (one reason) why NIST
    |> decided not to go with RSA:

    |>   "... NIST officials rejected the RSA method, which is
    |>    protected by a number of patents in the United States,
    |>    and developed an alternative approach that, according to
    |>    government lawyers, isn't covered by existing
    |>    patents..."

    jb> But I thought that the Public Key Partners' patent claims were
    jb> so broad as to cover practically anything you could do with
    jb> any public-key technique.  How does NIST get around all their
    jb> claims?

Well, here's the only section of the article which deals with what
exactly NIST's algorithm is: I don't have a copy of the standard, but
I'm sure someone in sci.crypt or something could give you a better
idea (indeed, I think I saw someone post an implementation of the NIST
method coded in perl to sci.crypt a few days ago... it was sloooow,
though :-):

   "The RSA method [...] depends on the computational difficulty of
    factoring a large number to find the two prime numbers that were
    multiplied together to generate the original number.  In contrast,
    the proposed NIST method relies for its security on the difficulty
    of computing what are called discrete logarithms."

Not much meat there.  They also say that they fully expect people
around the country/world to try as hard as they can to uncover any
weakness in the system.  If you're a mathematical type, I suggest you
go for it!  :-)

                                                                paul
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| Paul D. Smith                          | pds@lemming.webo.dg.com |
| Data General Corp.                     |                         |
| Network Systems Development Division   |   "Pretty Damn S..."    |
| Open Network Systems Development       |                         |
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