IP: Some corrections RSA Down Under

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

X-Sender: vin () shell1 shore net
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1999 20:39:31 -0500
To: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
From: Vin McLellan <vin () shore net>
Subject: Re: RSA Down Under

Hi Dave:

        Did I get it? Boy, did I ever!  A hundred helpful folks have
already gently (and none too gently;-) pointed out my two most annoying
errors.

        The EFF's DES-Cracker is called "Deep Crack," not "Deep Blue," as I
damn well know. It was, in fact, named in a playful spoof on the name of
D-Blue, which is IBM's cybermagnificent chess-playing machine.

        Even worse, given my subject, I short-changed Ron Rivest and
neglected to mention the latest in his RC ("Ron's Code") series of RSA
cryptosystems: RC6. <sigh>

        It is RSA's RC6 - not RC5 - that is a candidate to replace the
Digital Encryption Standard (DES).

        There was also a tangled line with a couple of words missing. The
little incoherent paragraph, about half way through the post, should read:

        "As I've heard the story, Young and Hudson, representing the
nascent RSA-Australia, worked for months to prove to technical examiners
from US Dept. of Commerce, and the NSA, that none of Young's code in the
new BSAF SSL-C toolkit was directly based on any code or technical analysis
developed in the US of A."

        Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa!

        Feel free to share my humiliation with your readers, if you think
it is appropriate.

      Warm Regards,

                _Vin


-----
"Cryptography is like literacy in the Dark Ages. Infinitely potent, for
good and ill... yet basically an intellectual construct, an idea, which by
its nature will resist efforts to restrict it to bureaucrats and others who
deem only themselves worthy of such Privilege."
_ A Thinking Man's Creed for Crypto  _vbm.

 *     Vin McLellan + The Privacy Guild + <vin () shore net>    *
      53 Nichols St., Chelsea, MA 02150 USA <617> 884-5548