NODE 75b62531Nortel "Entrust"
Jonathon Fletcher <jonathon@japan.sbi.com>Sun, 3 Mar 1996 06:00:05 +0800
Can anyone tell me anything about a product called "Entrust", by Nortel
(Northern Telecom). The notes talk about the software using DES ("which
employs a 56-bit key") so I guess it's single DES, not triple DES. It also
mentions a proprietary algorithm called CAST.
Is this worthy of further investigation, or is it suspect ? What is
CAST, and would it be classed as snake oil ?
Please cc to me in mail - I have a little trouble dealing with the
volume here.
Sincerely,
-Jon
--
Jonathon Fletcher, "opinions are my own, not my employer's"
jonathon@japan.sbi.com
NODE 2fa02e94Re: Nortel "Entrust"
SINCLAIR DOUGLAS N <sinclai@ecf.toronto.edu>Fri, 1 Mar 1996 22:09:57 +0800
> Is this worthy of further investigation, or is it suspect ? What is
> CAST, and would it be classed as snake oil ?
CAST is discussed in _Applied Cryptography_.
NODE aceb40a9Re: Nortel "Entrust"
lmccarth@cs.umass.eduFri, 1 Mar 96 07:42:54 PST
Jonathon Fletcher writes:
> Can anyone tell me anything about a product called "Entrust", by Nortel
> (Northern Telecom). The notes talk about the software using DES ("which
> employs a 56-bit key") so I guess it's single DES, not triple DES. It also
> mentions a proprietary algorithm called CAST.
>
> Is this worthy of further investigation, or is it suspect ? What is
> CAST, and would it be classed as snake oil ?
I asked one of the NorTel sales reps. about this at the RSA conference. As
I recall, CAST is an espionage-enabled version of DES -- i.e. 16 of the key
bits are sent in the clear, or have a fixed value, or something along those
lines. The guy I spoke to didn't know the technical details.
Of course, maybe we should consider 56-bit DES espionage-enabled at this
point too !
> Please cc to me in mail
(done)
-Lewis
NODE bd2374f9Re: Nortel "Entrust"
"Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com>Fri, 1 Mar 96 08:57:11 PST
Jonathon Fletcher writes:
> Can anyone tell me anything about a product called "Entrust", by Nortel
> (Northern Telecom). The notes talk about the software using DES ("which
> employs a 56-bit key") so I guess it's single DES, not triple DES. It also
> mentions a proprietary algorithm called CAST.
>
> Is this worthy of further investigation, or is it suspect ? What is
> CAST, and would it be classed as snake oil ?
"Entrust" was built by Smart People. Of course, any given component of
it is only as strong as the underlying algorithms; you yourself are
probably aware of the problems associated with DES vs 3DES and such. I
would suggest examining the documents.
I don't know anything about CAST.
Perry