Re: Is it possible to devise a public-key cipher with no flaws?

From: George Ou (533george_ou234_at_netzero234.com)
Date: 10/30/03 

Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 06:26:21 GMT

On 29 Oct 2003 08:14:26 -0800, ggr@qualcomm.com (Gregory G Rose)
wrote:

>Just to clear up a possible misconception or
>misperception, Diffie visited GCHQ well *after*
>the invention of public-key cryptography. There
>should be no thought that its invention by Diffie,
>Hellman and Merkle wasn't completely independent
>of any work at GCHQ and/or NSA.

Yes, I should have made that clear. Diffie visited many years later
when the other gentleman was an old man.

Technically speaking, Merkle probably had the first implementation
although it is extremely weak by any PKC standards. The computational
cost of cracking was only tens of times greater than the original key
generation time, and Merkle had a hell of a time explaining the
concept to his peers.

Bottom line, the scientific community rewards he who publishes the
first complete concept first, and that's how it has to be.

It doesn't hurt to acknolege the GCHQ guys. I've not seen anything on
what the NSA did. It is possible that they did, but there is no way
to know.

George Ou
http://www.LANArchitect.net