Re: R: strong encryption for Europeans

[Chris Lonvick <clonvick () cisco com>]

Hello Ming,

They were not exactly attacks.  These were a set of challenges offered
by RSA Labs (with prizes).  

http://www.rsa.com/rsalabs/97challenge/
http://www.rsa.com/rsalabs/97challenge/html/status.html
http://www.frii.com/~rcv/deschall.htm           (winner of DES)
http://rc5.distributed.net/                     (winner of RC5-32/12/7)

For those that don't wish to follow the URLs, 

  Challenge                  time to crack         Prize
 RC5-32/12/5   (40bit key)      3.5 hrs          US$ 1,000.
 RC5-32/12/6   (48bit key)    313   hrs          US$ 5,000.
 DES           (56bit key)    140   days         US$10,000.
 RC5-32/12/7   (56bit key)    265   days         US$10,000.

(And there's US$90,000. in prize money left in the other challenges.)

Later,

Chris Lonvick
Cisco Systems
Corporate Consulting
Houston, TX, USA
+1.713.778.5663

At 06:03 PM 11/24/97 -0500, Ming Lu wrote:
> Franco:
>
> I would like to see reports reagding these successful attacks. I could 
> not find them at CERT.
>
> TIA.
>
> On Mon, 24 Nov 1997, Franco RUGGIERI wrote:
>
> > Recently (June and October this year), attacks have been successfully
> > accomplished against DES and RC5 65 bit, by a huge number of computers
> > coordinated via Internet. Since participation in such effort was voluntary,
> > I wouldn't define such coordination as *strict*. Thus, we can assume that a
> > well determined organization would break codes based on keys up to 56 bit
> > in a reasonable amount of time. Therefore I wouldn't recommend VPNs based
> > on such systems (RCx, DES and the likes with *short*keys), unless for what
> > I would dub *minor areas* and for not long lasting applications.
> > This, of course, IMHO. I would appreciate comments (not flames!) on this
> > viewpoint of mine.
> > -------------------------------
> > Franco RUGGIERI
> > fruggieri () selfin net
> [snip]
>
> _ming