"Unbreakable Crypto" announcement??

Does anyone with access to the Financial Times know what the hell this
snippet is talking about??

-=fade=-

ENCRYPTION BREAKTHROUGH ANNOUNCED TODAY
August 24, 1998

     According to the Financial Times a new "unbreakable" encryption
technology, called the "Cramer-Shoup cryptosystem," will be annouced today
by mathematicians from the International Federal Institute of Technology
which supposedly will thwart even the most aggressive Internet hackers.
They claim to have created the first "unbreakable protection" which would
reportedly be a breakthrough that could ensure the security of electronic
commerce. The Financial Times said, "The breakthrough comes amid growing
anxiety about the vulnerability of Internet transactions since the 
discovery by researchers earlier this year of a new way to break through
even the strongest encryption systems."

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

In <Pine.BSI.3.95.980824130502.222A-100000@mail1.i1.net>, on 08/24/98 
   at 01:08 PM, Fade <fade@mail1.i1.net> said:

>Does anyone with access to the Financial Times know what the hell this
>snippet is talking about??

>-=fade=-

>ENCRYPTION BREAKTHROUGH ANNOUNCED TODAY
>August 24, 1998

>     According to the Financial Times a new "unbreakable" encryption
>technology, called the "Cramer-Shoup cryptosystem," will be annouced
>today by mathematicians from the International Federal Institute of
>Technology which supposedly will thwart even the most aggressive Internet
>hackers. They claim to have created the first "unbreakable protection"
>which would reportedly be a breakthrough that could ensure the security
>of electronic commerce. The Financial Times said, "The breakthrough comes
>amid growing anxiety about the vulnerability of Internet transactions
>since the  discovery by researchers earlier this year of a new way to
>break through even the strongest encryption systems."


Well this marketing hype just reeks of snake-oil.

- -- 
- ---------------------------------------------------------------
William H. Geiger III  http://www.openpgp.net
Geiger Consulting    Cooking With Warp 4.0

Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice
PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail.
OS/2 PGP 5.0 at: http://www.openpgp.net/pgp.html
- ---------------------------------------------------------------
 
Tag-O-Matic: "Luke!  I'm your father!"  Bill Gates, 1980

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Fade <fade@mail1.i1.net> asked the Listocracy:

>>Does anyone with access to the Financial Times know what the hell this
>>snippet is talking about??

>>ENCRYPTION BREAKTHROUGH ANNOUNCED TODAY
>>August 24, 1998  <snip>

	Having read the FT, WHG III  <whgiii@openpgp.net> growled:

>Well this marketing hype just reeks of snake-oil.

	It may be rash to condemn or dismiss a cryptographic proposal just
because corporate PR is unable to coherently explain the work. Cramer and
Shoup are serious players, and they are presenting a paper on their work at
Crypto98 today. The technical paper can be viewed at:
<http://www.zurich.ibm.com/Technology/Security/publications/1998/CS.pdf>

	For more uninformative PR, see:
<http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/980824/ibm_resear_1.html>

	IBM (Shoup's employer) offers a PR contact: Mike Ross, at IBM
Research, e-mail: mikeross@almaden.ibm.com  [Tel: 408/927-1283]

	Suerte,
		_Vin

-----
      Vin McLellan + The Privacy Guild + <vin@shore.net>
  53 Nichols St., Chelsea, MA 02150 USA <617> 884-5548
                         -- <@><@> --

On Mon, 24 Aug 1998, Fade wrote:

> 
> Does anyone with access to the Financial Times know what the hell this
> snippet is talking about??
> 
> -=fade=-
> 
> ENCRYPTION BREAKTHROUGH ANNOUNCED TODAY
> August 24, 1998
> 
>      According to the Financial Times a new "unbreakable" encryption
> technology, called the "Cramer-Shoup cryptosystem," will be annouced today

check out http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~shoup/papers/

> 
>

>Does anyone with access to the Financial Times know what the hell this
>snippet is talking about??
>
>-=fade=-
>
>ENCRYPTION BREAKTHROUGH ANNOUNCED TODAY
>August 24, 1998
>
>     According to the Financial Times a new "unbreakable" encryption
>technology, called the "Cramer-Shoup cryptosystem," will be annouced today
>by mathematicians from the International Federal Institute of Technology
>which supposedly will thwart even the most aggressive Internet hackers.
>They claim to have created the first "unbreakable protection" which would
>reportedly be a breakthrough that could ensure the security of electronic
>commerce. The Financial Times said, "The breakthrough comes amid growing
>anxiety about the vulnerability of Internet transactions since the
>discovery by researchers earlier this year of a new way to break through
>even the strongest encryption systems."

Who would have guessed that a journalist would so grievously misrepresent
the claims of a soberly presented scholarly report? The title of the
technical paper is: "A Practical Public Key Cryptosystem Provably Secure
against Adaptive Chosen Ciphertext Attack". The only new claim is security
against a chosen ciphertext attack, not "unbreakable". The specific
internet angle is that an attacker might have access to a "decryption
oracle" due to the nature of high volume anonymous transactions. If one
could slip through a few million adaptively chosen ciphertexts, current
systems could leak enough information to compromise themselves. The
reported results are for a new proposed system that is not vulnerable to
this sort of attack.

Steve Bryan
Vendorsystems International
email: sbryan@vendorsystems.com
icq: 5263678
pgp fingerprint: D758 183C 8B79 B28E 6D4C  2653 E476 82E6 DA7C 9AC5

It's not snake oil (yet?), but the word unbreakable is lame.
check out a preliminary paper on it...
http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~shoup/papers/
Title A practical public key cryptosystem provably secure against adaptive
chosen ciphertext attack


Fade wrote:

> Does anyone with access to the Financial Times know what the hell this
> snippet is talking about??
>
> -=fade=-
>
> ENCRYPTION BREAKTHROUGH ANNOUNCED TODAY
> August 24, 1998
>
>      According to the Financial Times a new "unbreakable" encryption
> technology, called the "Cramer-Shoup cryptosystem," will be annouced today
> by mathematicians from the International Federal Institute of Technology
> which supposedly will thwart even the most aggressive Internet hackers.
> They claim to have created the first "unbreakable protection" which would
> reportedly be a breakthrough that could ensure the security of electronic
> commerce. The Financial Times said, "The breakthrough comes amid growing
> anxiety about the vulnerability of Internet transactions since the
> discovery by researchers earlier this year of a new way to break through
> even the strongest encryption systems."



--
o Mordy Ovits
o Programmer/Cryptographer
o LockStar Inc.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
#!/usr/local/bin/python
from sys import*;from string import*;a=argv;[s,p,q]=filter(lambda x:x[:1]!=
'-',a);d='-d'in a;e,n=atol(p,16),atol(q,16);l=(len(q)+1)/2;o,inb=l-d,l-1+d
while s:s=stdin.read(inb);s and map(stdout.write,map(lambda i,b=pow(reduce(
lambda x,y:(x<<8L)+y,map(ord,s)),e,n):chr(b>>8*i&255),range(o-1,-1,-1)))

Cramer & Shoup presented a paper this AM with some provable
properties; ie, if decisional DH is hard, then their system is hard as
well.

Adam


On Mon, Aug 24, 1998 at 03:22:42PM -0400, Chip Mefford wrote:
| On Mon, 24 Aug 1998, Fade wrote:
| > Does anyone with access to the Financial Times know what the hell this
| > snippet is talking about??
| > 
| > -=fade=-
| > 
| > ENCRYPTION BREAKTHROUGH ANNOUNCED TODAY
| > August 24, 1998
| > 
| >      According to the Financial Times a new "unbreakable" encryption
| > technology, called the "Cramer-Shoup cryptosystem," will be annouced today
| 
| check out http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~shoup/papers/
| 
| > 
| >