Mailing List Archive

On Fri, 15 Jan 1999, Billy Harvey wrote:
> A young lady in Ireland has developed a cryptographic algorithm that
> at first look provides significantly better speed than RSA. She is
> thinking of releasing the algorithm under open source. The article
> seems relevant to the kernel due to the recent discussions of
> cryptographic hooks. An open source algorithm would be well accepted
> by many users of Linux.
If true, it is *highly* imperative she distributes the sources far and
wide such that it would be impossible for the Evil Powers-That-Be to
censor it, to gag her or even worse, have her murdered in the name of
National Security. It can happen and has actually happened in the past
(cf. German hacker found dead before Christmas - he had been working on
encryption)
Cheers,
Alex.
---
/\_/\ Legalise cannabis now!
( o.o ) Grow some cannabis today!
> ^ < Peace, Love, Unity and Respect to all.
Check out http://www.tahallah.demon.co.uk
Linux lo-pc3035a 2.2.0-pre6 #5 Tue Jan 12 10:28:32 EST 1999
One Intel Pentium 75 - 200 processor, 66.36 total bogomips, 16M RAM
System library 5.4.44
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On Fri, 15 Jan 1999, Billy Harvey wrote:
> A young lady in Ireland has developed a cryptographic algorithm that
> at first look provides significantly better speed than RSA. She is
> thinking of releasing the algorithm under open source. The article
> seems relevant to the kernel due to the recent discussions of
> cryptographic hooks. An open source algorithm would be well accepted
> by many users of Linux.
>
> http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB19990114S0014
As nice as a free, open source, patent-unencumbered replacement for RSA
would be, some caution is called for. It would be prudent to wait until
the system has been subjected to some rigorous crytanalysis first, lest we
discover six moths after adopting it that it can be trivially broken with
pencil and paper.
Russ Steffen
rsteffen@ia.net
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On Jan 15, 3:12pm, Billy Harvey wrote:
> Subject: New possible source for cryptographic algorithm
> A young lady in Ireland has developed a cryptographic algorithm that
> at first look provides significantly better speed than RSA. She is
> thinking of releasing the algorithm under open source. The article
> seems relevant to the kernel due to the recent discussions of
> cryptographic hooks. An open source algorithm would be well accepted
> by many users of Linux.
>
> http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB19990114S0014
A couple of points:
The algorithm has not been released to the general public.
It may yet be patented.
It has not undergone peer review.
The keys are eight times the size of an RSA key.
The algorithm is for public key cryptography. It does not lend itself to being
a block or stream cypher very well.
Much better use of time would be spent getting known algorithms implemented.
(via supporting the kerneli.org effort.)
--
Alan Olsen
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The speed of RSA is irrelevent for short messages (RSA is usually only
used for a random session key). For long messages RSA would be useless
because a) it leaks information b) it's very slow.
From what I read, this alg was 'proven' as secure as RSA. Which means A is
still an issue. Also, it doubles the size of the data output, making it
useless for large data sets anyways.
Check out elgamml as used in GPG.
On Fri, 15 Jan 1999, Billy Harvey wrote:
> A young lady in Ireland has developed a cryptographic algorithm that
> at first look provides significantly better speed than RSA. She is
> thinking of releasing the algorithm under open source. The article
> seems relevant to the kernel due to the recent discussions of
> cryptographic hooks. An open source algorithm would be well accepted
> by many users of Linux.
>
> http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB19990114S0014
>
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu
> Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
>
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On 15-Jan-99 Billy Harvey wrote:
> A young lady in Ireland has developed a cryptographic algorithm that
> at first look provides significantly better speed than RSA. She is
> thinking of releasing the algorithm under open source. The article
> seems relevant to the kernel due to the recent discussions of
> cryptographic hooks. An open source algorithm would be well accepted
> by many users of Linux.
bruce schneier says leave it alone for 5 years
that's good enough for me
on the other hand - michael purser (who according to the reports gave her the
idea) was my supervisor at university. he is quite a clever bloke and baltimore,
where she did the work, specialises in crypto software,
--
simon
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