🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <9212142000.AA46814@chaos.intercon.com> amanda@intercon.com (Amanda Walker) writes:
>This seems fairly simple to me.  With the ability to build fast custom 
>hardware (certainly within the NSA's capabilities :)), a brute-force search 
>of the keyspace of DES is *much* more computationally tractable than it is 
>for RSA.  That is to say, DES does not represent a strategic barrier to an 

i would agree.  if the government "pushes" a particular encryption
scheme, it's probably because they're able to crack it.

>DES was never billed as anything more than a cipher system that was good 
>enough for most applications.  I think it still serves as such, and at this 
>point I, at least, am confident that it's exactly what it's advertised to be.  
>I am also confident that the NSA and many of their international counterparts 
>can routinely read DES-encoded traffic.
>
DES is certainly good enough to stop casual snooping, but i wouldn't
trust it if *i* were running a big corporation.  it does make me wonder
how fast the NSA gang can crack DES stuff, though.  seems like i 
remember reading somewhere that one of the criticisms of DES is
that nobody's quite sure where the S-boxes came from...furthermore,
they're non-random, leaving a possible trapdoor somewhere.  if *that*
was true, no wonder NSA wants us all using DES!

>Generally speaking, I find that this does not matter to me.  But make no 
>mistake, I do feel that legal restraints against the use of strong 
>cryptosystems by private citizens should be opposed, for much the same 
>reasons that I support the right to keep and bear firearms and other weapons.
>
yep.  

drew 
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