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From: mitch@stride1.UUCP (Thomas P. Mitchell)
Newsgroups: sci.crypt,comp.misc
Subject: Re: public key encryption and RSA patent status
Message-ID: <688@stride.Stride.COM>
Date: Mon, 5-Oct-87 14:51:59 EDT
Article-I.D.: stride.688
Posted: Mon Oct  5 14:51:59 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 9-Oct-87 04:43:12 EDT
References: <107@lll-risky.arpa> <683@stride.Stride.COM> <109@lll-risky.arpa>
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Reply-To: mitch@stride1.UUCP (Thomas P. Mitchell)
Organization: MicroSage Comp. Sys. Inc., 680 S. Rock Blvd, Reno, NV 89502
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In article <109@lll-risky.arpa> tjt@lll-risky.arpa (Tim Tessin) writes:
>In article <683@stride.Stride.COM> (Thomas P. Mitchell) writes:
>> Well, I think that the RSA patent holders need to get off their
>> duff and get their invention out as a product.  A lot of us would
>> use it if priced in a reasonable way.
>
>RSA based products are available from RSA Data Security 
>(415-595-8782) for reasonable prices.  They have two products, 
>Mailsafe and BSAFE.  Mailsafe is a
>product which sends encrypted electronic mail between PC's.  BSAFE
>is the coded RSA algorithms in 'C'.

Thanks Tim;

I called and these are available for MS-DOS.  They are not
presently available for other environments, VAX or NCR machines
(or ours Stride).

With a pre-payment of royalties ($10,000) one could get the
subroutine libraries (*.o files) for BSAFE.  Then with the
libraries one could set out to build some thing useful.  None of
which could be exported outside of the US without limiting the
bit size of the keys and stripping out DES.

>lots of money is that if the Government already has rights to the
>stuff, I will only pay them a reasonable charge for the implementation,
>not for rights to use it.  
Amen 

Perhaps we in this group are barking up the wrong tree.  Rather
than building a vault we might consider an envelope.  Something
not too tough but strong enough to keep the postman from reading
the mail by holding it up to the light.  If we use VAX hours as a
standard measure of decryption difficulty I would consider 2-5 VAX
hours per K bytes of message a good envelope.

Thomas P. Mitchell (mitch@stride1.Stride.COM)
Phone:	(702) 322-6868 TWX:	910-395-6073
MicroSage Computer Systems Inc. a Division of Stride Micro.
Opinions expressed are probably mine.