From: mea culpa (jerichoDIMENSIONAL.COM)
Date: Fri Aug 20 1999 - 06:03:22 CDT

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http://www.newspage.com/cgi-bin/NA.GetStory?story=h0812161.902\&date=19990813\&level1=46510\&level2=46515\&level3=821

Code Cracker Worries Cryptographers

August 13, 1999

WORCESTER, MASS. - The Associated Press via NewsEdge Corporation : A
developer of one of the most widespread computer encryption systems said
Thursday he has designed a computer that could crack open a file encoded
using the most common form of data encryption in only a few days.

If built _ at an estimated cost of about $2 million _ such a computer
could jeopardize the privacy of the bulk of electronic commerce as
practiced today, according to cryptographers at the conference where the
design was shown.

Most highly sensitive military, banking and other data are protected by
stronger encryption keys beyond its reach. The commonly used weaker keys,
though, would become ``easy to break for large organizations,'' said
cryptographer Adi Shamir of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot,
Israel.

He developed both the new computer design and helped invent the widespread
coding system _ known as RSA public-key encryption _ that it attacks.

Shamir spoke at the opening of a two-day conference of more than 120
cryptography experts from around the world at Worcester Polytechnic
Institute.

Computer scientists said his work underscores the growing vulnerability of
the most commonly used short form of RSA keys, which consists of just 512
bits. The key _ a sequence of 1s and 0s, or bits _ unlocks the secret
coding of a computer transmission so it can be deciphered.

Shamir dubs his idea for the computer Twinkle, which stands for The
Weizmann Institute Key Locating Engine and also refers to the twinkle of
its light emitting diodes. The 6-by-6-inch optical computer would measure
the light from diodes to perform mathematical calculations solving 512-bit
RSA encryption keys faster than ever _ within two or three days. An effort
in February to solve shorter, easier 465-bit keys took hundreds of
computers and several months.

[snip..]

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