PGP Crack???

This just appeared in alt.security.pgp.  Is there anything to it?  I'm dubious.
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From: kwyatt@fix.net (Keith)
Newsgroups: alt.security.pgp,talk.politics.crypto
Subject: New release: PGP Cracker
Date: 30 Mar 1996 02:23:58 +0100
Organization: http://www.fix.net/~kwyatt/pgpcrack.html
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Announcement:
No longer is PGP uncrackable. A new software program has been released
that cracks PGP encrypted messages. Find out more at:
http://www.fix.net/~kwyatt/pgpcrack.html
http://www.tcf.com:80/~kwyatt/pgpcrack.html

Our apologies to Phil Zimmerman!

> This just appeared in alt.security.pgp.  Is there anything
 > to it?  I'm dubious. 

Gee - Is it April 1st again?  Time to troll the newbies in all
my favorite newsgroups. 

On a more serious note, does anyone know what is happening 
with Arjen Lenstra and RSA-130?  Last I heard back in late 
December, FAFNER, the magic WWW sieving dragon, had collected 
more than enough relations from participants to yield a 
factorization.  Surely they have not spent an additional four 
months crunching the big boolean matrix at CWI.

This is an important experiment, since it will yield a robust
estimate of the time required to break 512 bit PGP keys using
the best available factoring software.  

--
     Mike Duvos         $    PGP 2.6 Public Key available     $
     mpd@netcom.com     $    via Finger.                      $

On Fri, 29 Mar 1996, Mike Duvos wrote:

> On a more serious note, does anyone know what is happening
> with Arjen Lenstra and RSA-130?  Last I heard back in late
> December, FAFNER, the magic WWW sieving dragon, had collected
> more than enough relations from participants to yield a
> factorization.  Surely they have not spent an additional four
> months crunching the big boolean matrix at CWI.

Apparently the Cray they are using to crunch the matrix is busy with
higher priority users and they have not been able to squeeze in enough CPU
time.  I was told at the beginning of March that they didn't expect to
finish before late April, but now it looks like the job will take another
two to three months.  Anyone got a spare supercomputer laying around?

Wei Dai

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

In list.cypherpunks, byrd@ACM.ORG writes:

>
> This just appeared in alt.security.pgp.  Is there anything to it?  I'm 
> dubious.

[snippo...]

> Announcement:
> No longer is PGP uncrackable. A new software program has been released
> that cracks PGP encrypted messages. Find out more at:
> http://www.fix.net/~kwyatt/pgpcrack.html

So you didn't have time to go check out the URL?

- ----- begin 'lynx -dump' output -----
Welcome to the PGP Cracker home page. As system
administrator you know the frustration in reading your
users Email if they use PGP. Or if your lover is
receiving encrypted messages you would be interested in
reading that encrypted email. Of course, government agencies
will be greatly interested in this new tool also.  The
program is free for non-commercial users! For government and
commercial applications the cost is $500.00 per site.
The program only runs on UNIX machines.

How does it work?
To decrypt any message that uses PGP you need the Public
Key and the random number generated to encrypt the message.

Commands:
Crack  -d filename.ext    Decrypts any encrypted message less than 2047 bytes.
Crack  -p secring.pgp     Lets you modify a keys password so the owner can
                          no longer decrypt messages.
Crack  -s PUBKEY.EXT      Lets you modify the public key ID information.
Crack  -h                 The crack help file

PGP Cracker is Copyright 1996 by Keith Wyatt, All Rights reserved.

   Download PGP Crack
- ----- end 'lynx -dump' output -----

The "Download PGP Crack" is a link.  Follow it and you get the following
text:

- ----- begin 'lynx -dump' output -----

                                 APRIL FOOLS!
                                       
- ----- end 'lynx -dump' output -----

Of course, if you have "the random number generated to encrypt the
message", you have the session key.  No further magic is necessary, and
no public key required.

But I bet a lot of newless cluebies bite.
- -- 
Roy M. Silvernail --  roy@cybrspc.mn.org will do just fine, thanks.
          "Does that not fit in with your plans?"
                      -- Mr Wiggen, of Ironside and Malone (Monty Python)
          PGP public key available upon request (send yours)

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

iQCVAwUBMVzfnBvikii9febJAQFeGwQAr3/U2WUSZ05z5oiE07f4NrUHEDxNFdSb
nVHDn9dnY7+e2mKy1rJJPZb8b+gaQEzig3WPbM4SO+loIJkoRmXq1xqKz46sBNON
nunJAQfgUuGBq36i3YBjy2bH+LSrgu5jvDd/Nqc+9Rfqu9kFV4kxxnpCuSi2nwUf
bbB6vJr9WRg=
=6ejG
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----