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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Scumbria who wrote (46994)	1/22/1999 4:05:00 AM
From: Paul Engel	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 1571405

Scumby - Re: "There is little risk to competitors because any hardware encryption scheme can be securely emulated in software. " You must be JOKING ! Intel is implementing this in HARDWARE because software security is not capable of the same degree of security. For example - Intel is using a RANDOM NUMBER GENERATOR using the thermal noise from specific circuits on the chip. Software algorithms are restricted to PSEUDO RANDOM NUMBER generators - which can be successfully defeated. Bear in mind - Intel didn't develop this in a vacuum. They have been working with RSA, HP and many of the other key players in the field of secure data transmission. Paul

To: Scumbria who wrote (46994)	1/22/1999 9:03:00 AM
From: Jim McMannis	Respond to of 1571405

Scumbria, RE:"No one has ever ventured safely into hardware public key encryption before, and Intel is taking a risk going there now"... Played like a violin, the fear of the government snooping on Computer users with Intel inside could be the biggest marketing gift AMD has ever received. Jim

To: Scumbria who wrote (46994)	1/22/1999 12:44:00 PM
From: Tenchusatsu	Respond to of 1571405

<Not really. There is little risk to competitors because any hardware encryption scheme can be securely emulated in software. Hardware keys are are a good idea for nuclear weapons, but are massive overkill for home PC's.> I beg to differ. Not every hardware encryption scheme can be 100% securely emulated in software. One of the keys (no pun intended) to public-key cryptography is to make sure that the private key never gets out, even if the owner wanted it to. This will prevent misbehaved software from extracting the private key. It will also prevent the case where the owner claims the security of his or her private key was compromised, thus allowing that owner to deny officially signing that electronic document or purchase order. That's why I'm still wondering why the digital ID on Intel's new processors will be used for cryptography when its publicly accessible. Tenchusatsu