pgp broken?

In speaking with an associate, he mentioned in passing that PGP had 
been broken a few weeks ago in San Diego by the DoD using a Cray.  
All questioning about said subject was ended immediately as he felt 
that he might have said too much how it was.  Was PGP "broken"?

His background:  Prez of a firm with offices in D.C. & Silicon 
Valley.  He is a former Thunderbird pilot, and so has some 
connections in the military.  He has designed many hardware 
encrypting configurations using the VLSI007 chip as well as other 
chips that I am not familiar with.  One of his present projects is
designing a hardware encryption layout for Apple. 

Could this be part of the reason the charges were dropped against 
Phil as well?

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
greg pitz                                              pitz@onetouch.com 
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

Although there is always the possibility that PGP could be broken, it
is highly unlikely that the program as a whole has been broken.  I
would think that it would be much easier to attempt to guess someone's
passphrase than to brute-force the crypto in the program.

Also, if it is the DoD that is purporting this supposed break, I doubt
the public will ever hear about it.  It would be interesting to know
"how" PGP was supposedly broken.  Was a cryptographic routine broken,
or was it a user interface break?  I.e., was a signature forged or a
message decrypted?  Or was an old message replayed as a new one?

Also, it could be that a small PGP key has been broken.  A 384-bit PGP
key has already been broken by a factoring attack.  That is neither
surprising nor alarming to say the least.  Without more information it
really is impossible to analyze what happened.

-derek

> In speaking with an associate, he mentioned in passing that PGP had 
> been broken a few weeks ago in San Diego by the DoD using a Cray.  
> All questioning about said subject was ended immediately as he felt 
> that he might have said too much how it was.  Was PGP "broken"?

There's a store here in Chicago that sells surveillance equipment.  I had 
driven by it for years and never gone in, and a few weeks ago I finally 
gave in to curiosity and checked it out.

One of the things they were selling was a $100 floppy disk labeled 
"public key encryption".  Is that like PGP?  "No, this is much better.  
PGP can be broken, this uses DES."  (DES isn't a public key algorithm, of 
course, and it's no longer considered secure.)

There have been hundreds of reports like yours throughout PGP's short
history.  They're always second hand, and there's never any information
about the specifics of the attack.  It's hard to take such reports 
seriously.

What do you mean when you speak of "breaking PGP"?  Decrypting a single
message?  Forging a single signature?  Producing a private key from a
public one?  Figuring out a way to make one of those other problems easier
by exploiting a weakness in PGP's implementation?  A new attack on RSA,
IDEA, or MD5?  Coming up with a technique for factoring big numbers?

I'd be willing to bet that most people -- literally, more than half -- who
use PGP have made the mistake of picking a weak passphrase.  If I'm right
about that, it would mean that an awful lot of people who think they have
security don't.  If you pick a weak passphrase, your key could fall to a
dictionary attack.  But that's a problem with the user, not PGP.

It's most likely that the person who told you that PGP had been broken was
mistaken.  If there's anything at all to the story, chances are
overwhelming that he was referring to a successful dictionary attack
against a single key.  A lot of people seem to feel a little uneasy about
MD5, which PGP uses to make signatures;  perhaps some super spook has put 
a dent in that.

Anything is possible.  It's only "Pretty Good" privacy.

But you can rest assured that if credible evidence that PGP has been
compromised ever emerges, you won't have to go digging around for it.  It
will be all over the net and the traditional media.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

On Tue, 16 Jan 1996, greg pitz wrote:
> In speaking with an associate, he mentioned in passing that PGP had 
> been broken a few weeks ago in San Diego by the DoD using a Cray.  
> All questioning about said subject was ended immediately as he felt 
> that he might have said too much how it was.  Was PGP "broken"?
> 
PGP has already been "broken" -- the 384-bit Blacknet key was factored.
Just because the government may be able to factor a 512-bit key, it does not
mean that they can break 2048, 1024, or even a 709-bit key.  If this person
was telling the truth, the government probably only broke a small key.  

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: 2.6.2

iQCVAwUBMPxN6LZc+sv5siulAQHlKQP/cdHOmErMIUuIEGWdQ1EL+PhW5RexaxsA
bUDv0eLZ8vPnRDShhWuA6Mo01Vvyej4hu+FkBomqKlmMSjl0YRK9UisoJ30gbrbj
N1obHDsa7BK+jVt1rSujEECDS/GFJ+m4iPyJcnKVRlKK10n+2iTbQ24r2e3ZdcP0
59jYpfbYE8o=
=ReUZ
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


--

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
markm@voicenet.com              | finger -l for PGP key 0xf9b22ba5
http://www.voicenet.com/~markm/ | bd24d08e3cbb53472054fa56002258d5
PGP: Because sometimes, a _Captain Midnight_ decoder ring simply
isn't enough.

"greg pitz" writes:
> In speaking with an associate, he mentioned in passing that PGP had 
> been broken a few weeks ago in San Diego by the DoD using a Cray.  
> All questioning about said subject was ended immediately as he felt 
> that he might have said too much how it was.  Was PGP "broken"?

How could you break "PGP" per se using lots of computer power? Its an
encryption system, not a particular key. What would the Cray have been
doing? Running an AI program trying to come up with new factoring
algorithms?

Now, I could believe that someone could break PGP -- perhaps by
finding some weakness in the implementation of RSA, or the RNG, or
maybe even a weakness in RSA itself. However, I have a great deal of
trouble believing that PGP *itself* was broken "using a Cray". If it
is going to be broken, it will be done using a few pounds of neurons
fed by a blood supply (at least until real AIs are out there
publishing math papers).

> Could this be part of the reason the charges were dropped against 
> Phil as well?

I doubt it. The statute of limitations was going to expire soon in any
case.

Perry