Tom Sargent wrote:
>
> Hi all
>
> On page 8 of the New Scientist of 9th November there is a report of two
> Israelis, Eli Biham and Adi Shamir developing a device for breaking most long
> key encryption. Apparently they expose the PC with a message in it to a
> Microwave which degrades the message and after two or three goes compare the
> results. The degradation allows the original key to be detected (allegedly).
>
> I have always viewed unbreakable codes with the same jaundiced eye as drugs with
> no side effects and antibiotics with no resistant organisms. How does this
> affect PGP or the others like it ?
>
> Further chilling little thought. If this is now being published, how long has
> it been in the hands of the spooks. It is rumoured that military systems are
> always 5 years ahead of civillian.
Yes this has been discussed in the newsgroup alt.security.pgp
As far as PGP or any encryption algorithm - there's probably not too
much to worry about because the microwave device has to make changes to
a chip in a defined way feeding a prepared message to the encoding chip
several times. So the algorithm is still "secure" but the encoding chip
may not be. A small team of spooks carrying a laptop, microwave device
and various other bits of kit are not easily going to get access to our
homes so they can "spook" pgp on our home pcs. The real threat is with
larger dedicated systems. So the codes are still uncrackable but the
encryption devices and the people who use them are not. What you encode
using a 1024 bit key on your home computer is safe from decryption for
several lifetimes. But your computer, your family & you are much less
secure...over to Ross :-)
--
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*Alan Hassey email [log in to unmask] & [log in to unmask]*
* http://www.midwife.demon.co.uk/ >>>>>> PGP public key available*
* GP, GP Trainer & GP Computer Adviser (NYHA), Skipton, N. Yorks.*
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