🚀 go-pugleaf

>The ACM articles allowed Rivest, et al., completely free rein to spout off
>with criticism of the NIST DSS, which seemed to boil down to three main
>issues:
>	1) RSA has a bandwagon - you better jump on!
>	2) NSA advised NIST on DSS -- they must have inserted a trap door!
>	3) 512 bits won't work as a maximum key length.

I also read the ACM issue, but my reaction is quite different.  The main
complaint that people had about the proposed NIST scheme is that it had
appeared out of nowhere, with no adequate chance for public review.
Design of cryptographic schemes is very difficult and nobody takes a
scheme seriously until it has withstood attack for quite a while.  One of
the articles pointed out some fairly obvious bugs in the proposed scheme
which makes one wonder whether they'd tested it at all.

The RSA patents are annoying, but RSA does have the advantage that it's
been around for over a decade and has withstood attack.

>In other words, both magazines allowed people with vested *financial* 
>interest in one side of the issue to present their personal views as
>scholarly criticism of the NIST DSS.

In most fast moving technical fields, all the experts have a financial
interest on one side or another.  This doesn't disqualify them from having
useful opinions.  Rivest et al. make no secret of their affiliations, and
even keeping that in mind I found their counterarguments to the NIST
scheme compelling.

Regards,
John Levine, johnl@iecc.cambridge.ma.us, {spdcc|ima|world}!iecc!johnl