The Upcoming DES Challenge

[pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz]

Orbital mind control lasers made mpd at netcom.com (Mike Duvos) write:
 
>Peter Trei (trei at process.com) writes:
>>1. I'm astonished at the low level of reaction RSA's announcement that they 
>>will be sponsoring a DES Challenge, with a $10,000 cash prize.
>I'm certainly jumping up and down and cheering.  I said a while back that the 
>life expectancy of DES would be about two weeks if anyone forked over serious 
>cash.
 
I'm still a bit nervous about what the reaction will be though - won't the 
US government (and anyone else pushing DES) be able to say "It took 10,000 
Pentiums several weeks, noone would bother doing that, so it's safe" (with a 
possible side order of "Safer-SK64 is 256 times as secure, anyone we really 
like can use that provided they hand over the keys in advance").
 
Peter.