Re: Interesting Discussion with US Government Computer Expert

From: Russ Lyttle (lyttlec_at_earthlink.net)
Date: 08/30/03 

Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2003 23:42:22 GMT

No One wrote:

> OK. Here's the deal. I work for the government as a consultant on SIPRNET.
> Had a discussion with a fellow contractor who works for a government
> agency in Maryland. (Hint, Hint).
>
> He implied that RSA-type keys were inherently unsecure because of known
> plaintext attacks. That is if I have your public key and use it to
> encrypt one or more text messages (or I guess any other data), by knowing
> the algorithm I can calculate the private key by comparing the cipherttext
> and the know plaintext.
>
> I think there has to be more to the story. Unfortunately, my knowledge of
> this encryption stops at knowing what group (i.e. this one) to ask the
> question in.
>
> There has to be more to the story, right guys?? Probably involving
> factoring very large prime numbers?
>
> I don't really need to know the answer to this question, but it will
> provide an indication of how seriously I should take anything else this
> guy says.
>
> Thanks
I think if your friend were in a position to know, he wouldn't be talking.
Also a prime is defined as a number that can't be factored. OTOH, most key
generators make pseudo-primes. Some one might have found a way to attack
some RSA keys by finding factors to "weak" pseudo-primes. 

-- 
Russ Lyttle
lyttlecatearthlink.net
at = @

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