Code Cracker Worries Cryptographers
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Internet Privacy
BY JEFF DONN Associated Press Writer
WORCESTER, Mass. (AP) - Experts in computer encryption say a new computer design, if built, could crack the kind of secret keys that now protect the bulk of electronic commerce.
The estimated cost of such a computer - $2 million - would be manageable for many organizations. But most highly sensitive military, banking and other data are already protected by stronger keys, according to cryptographers at the conference where the design was shown.
The commonly used weaker keys, though, would become ''easy to break for large organizations,'' said cryptographer Adi Shamir of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel.
He developed both the new computer design and helped invent the widespread coding system - known as RSA public-key encryption - that it attacks.
Shamir spoke Thursday at the opening of a two-day conference of more than 120 cryptography experts from around the world at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
Computer scientists said his work underscores the growing vulnerability of the most commonly used short form of RSA keys, which consists of just 512 bits. The key - a sequence of 1s and 0s, or bits - unlocks the secret coding of a computer transmission so it can be deciphered.
Shamir dubs his idea for the computer Twinkle, which stands for The Weizmann Institute Key Locating Engine and also refers to the twinkle of its light emitting diodes. The 6-by-6-inch optical computer would measure the light from diodes to perform mathematical calculations solving 512-bit RSA encryption keys faster than ever - within two or three days. An effort in February to solve shorter, easier 465-bit keys took hundreds of computers and several months.
Shamir first informally showed a prototype of his device at a conference in Prague, the Czech Republic, in May. He publicly outlined its workings at length for the first time Thursday.
''Twinkle is a little out there, but it looks like it's buildable to me,'' said Seth Goldstein, an expert in computer architecture at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University.
Organized crime, friendly and unfriendly governments, research institutions and others might take an interest in such a project, conference participants suggested.
In any event, users of 512-bit keys ''should be worried,'' said Christof Paar, a computer engineer at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
''In the current state of the art, it is not secure,'' added Bob Silverman, a research scientist at Bedford-based RSA Laboratories, a division of RSA Data Security. Shamir co-founded RSA Data but no longer works there.
Longer keys, such as 1,024-bit, are already employed for many sensitive communications. But, out of intelligence and other concerns, the U.S. government requires special permission to export software with the longer keys. The most popular browsers are normally set to just 512 bits.
Brian Snow, a technical director for information security at the National Security Agency, spoke to the conference Thursday about weak quality assurance in commercial security products. But he declined to answer general questions for the press.
Though available, longer keys are harder to set up and take more computer power to operate. Such power may be scarce in the wireless telephones, home appliances and other computerized conveniences of the future, cryptographers said.
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