🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1993Jan10.050811.3740@ils.nwu.edu> mccoy@ils.nwu.edu (Jim Mccoy) writes:
>In article <1993Jan9.163011.23230@csi.uottawa.ca> cbbrowne@csi.uottawa.ca (Christopher Browne) writes:
>> [regarding the ability of the NSA to break DES encoded messages...]
>>
>>If that $56 figure is faintly accurate, then I expect that the NSA
>>must have some rather high-speed hardware, probably specialized to
>>DES, that costs quite a bit less than anyone expected.  I would have
>>expected a somewhat higher bill.
>
>Well, to the best of my knowledge the NSA has one of the largest
>collections of supercomputers (Y-MPs, etc.) in the world.  This is thier
>job after all, to crack codes.  In all the various conspiracy theories and
>other guesses regarding DES and the NSA, it should be noted that DES was at
>one time used for secure encryptin of files for some branches of the
>government (the "standard" in DES... :) and was decertified for this role
>as scheduled.  Few ciphers will last forever.  In time even the 1024 bit
>public keys people consider secure now will be crackable for $56.  

It doesn't surprise me AT ALL that the NSA would have "lotsa
supercomputers."  That kind of goes with the territory.  It also
doesn't surprise me that they can consider breaking DES.  With the
kind of computing horsepower they've got, brute force can't be THAT
hard.

What DOES surprise me a little is the pricetag of $56.

Cray Y-MPs don't come cheap.  Even the power bill for a year isn't
cheap :-).

I guess that my point is that if the price is a "mere" $56, then it
must not take much computer time to crack it.

I'm not aware of the current Cray pricing - I seem to remember it
being in about the $10 million range for some of the older models.

You've got to divide $10 million by quite a LARGE number of messages
in order to get that $56 figure.  (Try 178571 on for size...)

Even if they ignore the capital cost, and only consider the cost of
maintenance and the price of having staff people to keep the system
humming, that still probably comes to a good few hundred thousand $.
At that rather lower rate, they'd still have to be breaking HUNDREDS
of DES messages per day, on the ONE computer, with ONE set of staff.

If it "only" costs $56, then they must have some CHEAP ways to break
DES, unless they're COMPLETELY ignoring the cost of computer
resources.  In short, for $56 a pop, they can't be using brute force.
Maybe they can use differential analysis.  Maybe they can use
something analogous to D.A.  But for $56 per pop, they're either
lying, or they have SOME "silver bullet."

-- 
Christopher Browne                |     PGP 2.0 key available
cbbrowne@csi.uottawa.ca           |======================================
University of Ottawa              | Genius may have its limitations, but
Master of System Science Program  | stupidity is not thus handicapped.