Xref: utzoo comp.misc:5423 sci.crypt:1644
Path: utzoo!utgpu!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!decwrl!shelby!Portia!foo
From: foo@Portia.Stanford.EDU (castor fu)
Newsgroups: comp.misc,sci.crypt
Subject: Re: DES Busting--Let's See Some Proof!
Message-ID: <800@Portia.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 10 Mar 89 15:44:50 GMT
References: <15057@cup.portal.com> <5555@abo.fi> <6096@abo.fi> <15575@cup.portal.com>
Sender: castor fu <foo@Portia.stanford.edu>
Reply-To: foo@Portia.stanford.edu (castor fu)
Organization: Stanford University
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Although the Russian rumor is suspect, in a class I have been sitting in on
the professor said that Adi Shamir (MIT) claims to have broken (in some sense
which is not clear) a modified DES
where only 8 rounds of encryption instead of the normal sixteen are used.
This is very recent news, coming from SECURICOM '89, a crypto conference held
just a week or so ago.  He supposedly did this in 170 seconds on an IBM PC!
I guess people will have to wait for the proceedings for details, although
there may not be many because this work is probably proprietary, since
Shamir is the "S" in RSA.

I think that this may have involved particularly weak keys (in which case
it is not surprising) or a weak plaintext (very interesting!).  

			-Castor Fu
			foo@portia.stanford.edu