Forwarded From: phreakmoi <hackerelite@deathsdoor.com>
From:
http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,30222,00.html?st.ne.180.head
RSA conducts crypto-cracking contest
By Tim Clark
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
December 22, 1998, 11:30 a.m. PT
Crypto firm RSA Data Security next month will launch its third annual
crypto-busting contest, designed to illustrate that U.S. encryption export
rules are ridiculous.
As usual, this year's RSA contest will pay cash to the first person to
crack a message encrypted with a Data Encryption Standard (DES) 56-bit
key. But unless the 1999 winner beats a 56-hour record set in July,
there's no cash prize. The faster the code is broken, the bigger the
prize, up to $10,000.
"It's a reminder to developers that are using DES that they need to
switch," said Burt Kaliski, chief scientist at RSA Laboratories, RSA's
research arm. "It's not something that happened last summer and then goes
away. The contest can keep it on the forefront of people's planning."
NSA, a subsidiary of Security Dynamics sells stronger algorithms.
DES is a 20-year-old protocol created for the U.S. government that has
emerged as a standard for single-key encryption, widely used in government
and the financial services industry. It uses a single mathematical formula
to encrypt and decrypt data. A related standard, Triple DES, uses three
DES cryptographic keys, providing far stronger encryption.
RSA's patented public-key, private-key cryptographic algorithms are
different and much stronger, requiring one key to scramble data and
another unscramble it. RSA President Jim Bidzos has been an outspoken
critic of U.S. export controls.
The original DES Challenge was held January 1997, the secret key was
discovered in 96 days. In February 1998, the challenge took 41 days, but
in July a DES message was cracked in 56 hours by the Electronic Frontier
Foundation (EFF), using a network of standard PCs that cost around
$220,000.
The DES Challenge III will be launched at 9 a.m. PT January 18 on RSA's
home page, coinciding with the annual RSA conference in San Jose. RSA is
offering $10,000 to the first entrant to break the code within 24 hours,
$5,000 if recovering the key takes
-o-
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Received on Tue Dec 22 22:20:56 1998