On Wednesday, August 8, 2001, at 02:28 PM, Faustine wrote: > Lots of interesting possibilities for cryptographic applications, I'm > sure... > Massively Parallel Computational Research Laboratory > http://www.cs.sandia.gov/ >Except when was the last time you heard of a Cypherpunks-interesting >cipher being broken with _any_ amount of computer crunching? Since when did people stop trying? The last time I heard a researcher talk about trying to break a Cypherpunks-interesting cipher was last Thursday. Hearsay and hot air? Probably; nothing that merits repeating. But it's hardly a dead issue. >(The "challenges" broken by a couple of our own list members over the >past several years were all weak ciphers by modern standards, or had key >lengths way below even the recommended lengths of the day. Increasing >the key lengths by just several bits ups the work factor by a factor of >ten or so. Increasing it to recommended levels ups the work factor to >the level of "not all the computers that will ever be built in all of >the galaxies of the universe" will be able to brute-force a crack.) We've all heard that line before, but I still don't think it's too far- fetched to assume that anyone who does work in this area might appreciate 50 megs of free software to create his own supercomputer. >There are indeed some cryptographic uses for big computers, but not much >of real interest here. Some voice- and traffic-analysis stuff, but not >cracking modern ciphers. You never know what might come from putting that kind of computational power in the hands of people here. Create, break, do whatever you want. ~Faustine.
