Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!uwvax!dogie!uwmcsd1!bbn!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!tektronix!reed!mdr
From: mdr@reed.UUCP (Mike Rutenberg)
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Subject: Re: Request for opinions: canadian cryptographic standard.
Message-ID: <8529@reed.UUCP>
Date: 23 Mar 88 06:54:59 GMT
References: <2463@geac.UUCP> <17654@watmath.waterloo.edu> <2475@geac.UUCP>
Reply-To: mdr@reed.UUCP (Mike Rutenberg)
Organization: Reed College, Portland OR
Lines: 19

In article <2475@geac.UUCP> daveb@geac.UUCP (David Collier-Brown) writes:
>  Perhaps we should have made the LSI-embedding proprietary

>  The concern here is the easy availability of chipsets for doing
>parallell brute-force attacks on the encoded data.  Not the
>algorithm proper's security.

It would seem that to make the algorithm public necessarily leaves you
open to somebody building a brute force machine.  Even if you control
the supply of the chips ("I think we should reject Mr.Rutenberg's order
for 10,000 chips") the people who have the capability to build such a
machine could also (easily) make their own chips to do it.

Mike

p.s. Speaking of which, does anyone know of any DES chips designed
outside of the US, or even outside of COCOM control.  Just curious.
-- 
Mike Rutenberg    for fast, robust food and software      (503)771-5516