Re: The Cost of Snakeoil (was Re: John Gilmore and the Great Internet Snake Drive)

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Xcott Craver (caj@math.niu.edu)
Mon, 20 Jul 1998 18:17:37 -0500 (CDT)

On Mon, 20 Jul 1998, Robert Hettinga wrote:

> So, once again, I repeat: as of last week, DES *is* snakeoil, no matter its
> venerable pedigree. (See my .sig, below, to see what I think about
> venerable ideas.)
>
> So, anyone who sells DES in an application requiring *any* serious
> security, *especially* for commercial financial operations, is selling
> snakeoil. It's that simple.

        Maybe if you say "single-DES" instead of DES; the terminology is
        starting to confuse me. Single-DES implmentations are certainly
        snakeoil if sold as "strong" or "military grade" or whatever
        superlatives marketers toss upon these things.

        But when I hear "DES" I think of the algorithm, which
        *can* be sold in an application requiring serious security
        without making it snake-oil. 3DES is an example.

        And it's pushing it to declare a cryptosystem "DED,"
        when simply encrypting multiple times still yields a
        secure (and efficient) cipher.

> Cheers,
> Bob Hettinga

                                                        -Caj

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The following archive was created by hippie-mail 7.98617-22 on Fri Aug 21 1998 - 17:20:41 ADT