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On Wed, 6 Sep 2000, Paolo Carballo wrote:
> At 09:51 PM 9/5/00 +0800, Rafael R. Sevilla wrote:
> >This applies to source code only I think. If I put up a binary of a
> >strong encryption program on one of my web pages it would certainly
> >be illegal for me, the author, to download it. The American law
> >factory is frankly getting on my nerves now that I've ventured into
> >this sensitive domain.
> >
> Didn't the american government allow the export of full strength PGP?
> Which in turn caused the OCR and source code scanning project to
> stop. GnuPG is also free, (sorry for the pun).
They're only source relseases. You won't be able to download a binary of
PGP or GPG off a US-based server. It's a side effect of these
code-as-speech rulings that have recently come up, but that's shaky
ground, judging from what happened at MPAA v. 2600. GnuPG intentionally
wasn't developed in the United States, so it doesn't fall under US law.
Take a look at their website and read where it says you can download
Windows binaries of GPG: ftp.gnupg.de -- Germany, RPM packages:
crypto.ferrara.linux.it -- Italy, bins for other unices: rmartini.da.ru --
Russian Federation.
> Frankly, with the NSA's $4 billion a year budget and IBM playing with
> quantum computers, it wouldn't matter much if you used 8192/1024 bits
> for encryption. Brute force will soon be a thing of the past.
>
Quantum computers will *not* help anyone crack a symmetric key block
cipher. People have done computations on how much computing power it
would take to break a block cipher with a 256-bit key, and concluded that
if every atom on earth was a computer able to process a billion candidate
keys in one second pressed into service to crack it, it would still take
much more time than the age of the universe. Provided of course there are
no known weaknesses in the block cipher that would undermine its strength.
If every atom were a quantum computer, the improvement would only be to a
square root of the time required, which is still a *very* long time.
Grover's algorithm allows unordered searches in O(sqrt(N)) time, and
that's all the help you'll get doing a key search on a quantum computer.
1024 bits doesn't even bear thinking about. And for PKCS, it's only RSA
that's vulnerable to quantum computers. ElGamal or other PKCS based on
elliptic curves are not, unless someone discovers a quantum algorithm like
Shor's alg. for factoring and discrete log applicable to elliptic curve
computations.
> >Besides, one of the programs would be a version of the now
> >infamous DeCSS code converted into several types of assembly
> >language.
> >
> Which ones did you convert it to? GAS, NASM, TASM, MASM, ARROWSOFT,
> FASM, what else? Does one still need a DVD drive to rip the data?
>
Right now, I'm working on a basic 386 assembly version in NASM. When I
have some more time maybe I'll work on optimizing it to use MMX
instructions if possible... And not that I have a DVD drive yet. It's
more of a political statement on this issue than anything else. :-)
- --
Rafael R. Sevilla <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> +63 (2) 4342217
ICSM-F Development Team, UP Diliman +63 (917) 4458925
PGP Key available at http://home.pacific.net.ph/~dido/dido.pgp
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