Re: Silly technical question from a non-technical person

> 
> - For DES I think so, asked for others opinions, this might be the
>   next one to die, big project but possibly doable with lots of keys
>   at once
> 

But, what is a good DES target to attack??  SSL was a great target
because it is both visible and because it has a well
defined open specification that made it easy to determine 
exactly what to attack (unlike Microsoft Access).

I know someone who *used* to be in the ATM transaction 
business, but is no longer.  Is the code from a credit card
reader DES encrypted?  We could be possible "tap" the serial
port between the reader and the modem and get a byte 
stream in that manner.... but then again, my knowledge
of those beasts is pretty limited.

Dan

------------------------------------------------------------------
Dan Oelke                                  Alcatel Network Systems
droelke@aud.alcatel.com                             Richardson, TX
http://spirit.aud.alcatel.com:8081/~droelke/

In message <9508172055.AA15978@spirit.aud.alcatel.com>, Daniel R. Oelke writes:
[...]
>I know someone who *used* to be in the ATM transaction 
>business, but is no longer.  Is the code from a credit card
>reader DES encrypted?  We could be possible "tap" the serial
>port between the reader and the modem and get a byte 
>stream in that manner.... but then again, my knowledge
>of those beasts is pretty limited.

At least some of the cc-reader protocalls are not encrypted (but
they are rather cryptic on their own :-).  I don't know how common
this is 'tho.