Re: SSL challenge -- broken !

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From: Damien.Doligez@inria.fr (Damien Doligez)
> This is to announce the solution of the SSL challenge posted by Hal
> Finney on July 17, 1995 (message-ID: <3u6kmg$pm4@jobe.shell.portal.com>),
> also found at: <URL:http://www.portal.com/~hfinney/sslchal.html>

Although it is hardly necessary, I can confirm the accuracy of the
decryption found, and I extend my congratulations for this achievement!

Ironically, I understand that an independent effort coordinated by Adam
Back also discovered the key at approximately the same time.  In
addition, Eric Young had done a search starting at 8000000000 and
upwards; unfortunately the key value of 7ef0961fa6 was only about one
percent below his starting point.  Hopefully Adam will supply more
information.

It will be interesting to see what the fallout is from this
accomplishment.  It should provide ammunition for the current effort by
Microsoft and other companies to try to persuade the government to allow
the export of full 56 bit DES.

Knowing the tendency of the media and the net to oversimplify, this will
probably come out as "SSL is broken" just as the RSA-129 result led to
"RSA is broken" stories.  This would not be as egregious an
oversimplification as in the RSA case, but in fairness it should be
recognized that SSL as a spec provides support for much stronger ciphers
than the intentionally weakened RC4-40 which was broken here, but
Netscape was constrained by the government to supply browsers with only
the weak encryption.

I am a little alarmed by the suggestion that this news could have some
marked impact on the Netscape stock price.  From our perspective this was
certainly an unsurprising result (not to take anything away from Damien
and others who worked on it).  It is a useful reminder that the things we
work on here can have profound consequences.

Hal Finney
hfinney@shell.portal.com

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On Wed, 16 Aug 1995, Hal wrote:
 
> Ironically, I understand that an independent effort coordinated by Adam
> Back also discovered the key at approximately the same time. In
> addition, Eric Young had done a search starting at 8000000000 and
> upwards; unfortunately the key value of 7ef0961fa6 was only about one
> percent below his starting point.  Hopefully Adam will supply more
> information.

Dave Byers found it with his MasPar while searching the space that Eric 
had left out.  The MasPar was getting 1.4M keys per second and hence 
could search the entire 40 bit keyspace in about 9 days anyway.


- Andy

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| Andrew Brown  Internet <asb@nexor.co.uk>  Telephone +44 115 952 0585    |
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> Hal <hfinney@shell.portal.com> writes:
> I am a little alarmed by the suggestion that this news could have some
> marked impact on the Netscape stock price.  From our perspective this was
> certainly an unsurprising result (not to take anything away from Damien

So far it appears not to have had an effect.  The two web pages I know about
that track Netscape show it holding steady a point and a half above where it
opened.  Even the IF market on SSLW doesn't seem to be taking much notice of
it, despite my attempts at manipulating that market.

	Jim Gillogly
	Mersday, 24 Wedmath S.R. 1995, 18:06

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Perry E. Metzger writes:
 > Jim Gillogly writes:
 > > > Hal <hfinney@shell.portal.com> writes:
 > > > I am a little alarmed by the suggestion that this news could
 > > > have some marked impact on the Netscape stock price.  From our
 > > > perspective this was certainly an unsurprising result (not to
 > > > take anything away from Damien
 > > 
 > > So far it appears not to have had an effect.  The two web pages I
 > > know about that track Netscape show it holding steady a point and
 > > a half above where it opened.  Even the IF market on SSLW doesn't
 > > seem to be taking much notice of it, despite my attempts at
 > > manipulating that market.
 > 
 > I haven't seen any news stories about this on the wire
 > services. Someone would have to write a story about it first before
 > people would know...

     Expect to see something in the San Jose Mercury News in the near
future.  I contacted them to pitch the story, hoping to point out as
clearly and frequently as possible that the cracking was possible only
because of ITAR restrictions on key length.  They already have someone
working on it.

Regards,

Patrick May

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Even more to the point is my claim on IF about brute forcing
a 40 bit cipher "Cr40".

	-Lance

On Wed, 16 Aug 1995, Jim Gillogly wrote:

> 
> > Hal <hfinney@shell.portal.com> writes:
> > I am a little alarmed by the suggestion that this news could have some
> > marked impact on the Netscape stock price.  From our perspective this was
> > certainly an unsurprising result (not to take anything away from Damien
> 
> So far it appears not to have had an effect.  The two web pages I know about
> that track Netscape show it holding steady a point and a half above where it
> opened.  Even the IF market on SSLW doesn't seem to be taking much notice of
> it, despite my attempts at manipulating that market.
> 
> 	Jim Gillogly
> 	Mersday, 24 Wedmath S.R. 1995, 18:06
> 

----------------------------------------------------------
Lance Cottrell   loki@obscura.com
PGP 2.6 key available by finger or server.
Mixmaster, the next generation remailer, is now available!
http://obscura.com/~loki/Welcome.html or FTP to obscura.com

"Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra.  Suddenly
it flips over, pinning you underneath.  At night the ice
weasels come."
                        --Nietzsche
----------------------------------------------------------

Jim Gillogly writes:
> > Hal <hfinney@shell.portal.com> writes:
> > I am a little alarmed by the suggestion that this news could have some
> > marked impact on the Netscape stock price.  From our perspective this was
> > certainly an unsurprising result (not to take anything away from Damien
> 
> So far it appears not to have had an effect.  The two web pages I know about
> that track Netscape show it holding steady a point and a half above where it
> opened.  Even the IF market on SSLW doesn't seem to be taking much notice of
> it, despite my attempts at manipulating that market.

I haven't seen any news stories about this on the wire
services. Someone would have to write a story about it first before
people would know...

.pm

> > > Hal <hfinney@shell.portal.com> writes:
> > > I am a little alarmed by the suggestion that this news could have some
> > > marked impact on the Netscape stock price.  From our perspective this was

> Jim Gillogly writes:
> > So far it appears not to have had an effect.  The two web pages I know abou

> "Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com> writes:
> I haven't seen any news stories about this on the wire
> services. Someone would have to write a story about it first before
> people would know...

I note that Netscape is down 3 at the moment... cause and effect are hard
to identify, of course, since the stock has been waving around a lot since
its IPO a week ago.  In any case, provisional full marks to Perry.

	Jim Gillogly
	Highday, 25 Wedmath S.R. 1995, 15:38

> I haven't seen any news stories about this on the wire
> services. Someone would have to write a story about it first before
> people would know...

I've suggested this to a few reporters I know..

/hawk