Re: A factoring algorithm

"JP LR" <fake.address@voila.fr> wrote in message
news:43c143e5$0$29194$8fcfb975@news.wanadoo.fr...
>
> "Joseph Ashwood" <ashwood@msn.com> a écrit dans le message de
> news:r8Yvf.72037$tV6.49382@newssvr27.news.prodigy.net...
>> <hart_wb@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>> news:1136613824.569396.118650@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
>> > I have a new factoring algorithm which seems to be very fast with
>> > certain kinds of numbers.
>>
>> Any advances, or even new paths in factoring is always a welcome advance.
> If
>> your algorithm is as fast as you say, it is likely that new
>> qualifications
>> may need to be created for RSA keys, this is a well established area of
>> advancement, and will be appreciated. Even if it results in triviality as
>> Amling and Carmody have said the knowledge the an additional avenue is
>> available is often very useful.
>> Joe
>>
>>
>
> Hello
>
> I apologize in advance because I will probably make incorrect statements
> or
> it is perhaps not related to the subject of this thread.
> But I have always been astonished by the processing speed of smartcard
> with
> respect to OpenSSL on a modern PC.
> I have made comparison and smartcard are supposed to be 20 times slower
> than
> a Pentium IV (1.9 GHz).
> As smartcard use very slow processors (at best 32 bits at 20 Mghz) and use
> only a few milliwats of power, it is strange to me that it can be so close
> to CPU running at a frequency 75 times higher and using power that is more
> than 1000 times higher.
>
> This means that smartcards might be 3.75 quicker than Pentium IV at the
> same
> clock frequency. Perhaps that smartcards manufacturers have very optimised
> programs, but I was wondering if smartcard manufacturers could have used
> algorithms to generate RSA keys belonging to sets that could be processed
> more quickly than standard RSA keys?
>
> Do you think that such algorithms might be possible and unknown to the
> academic community?
>
> Jean-Pierre
>
>

Seems a little off topic, since smartcards do not need to factor numbers in
order
to authenticate. The only people with a use for a factoring algorithm are
criminals
without authorisation who might wish to break an RSA key. Of course I do not
study factoring for that or any other practical reason.

Anyyhow, with regards to your observation about the relative speeds of
smartcards
and PC's. Some of those systems are not particularly secure from memory, as
they
are assisted by a server somewhere in their calculations, so the processing
speed you
observe is not all in the card itself. I can't speak for smartcard, since I
am not a
cryptographer and know nothing about them. I don't even know if they use
RSA!

But I think the point you are missing comes under the general rubric of
dedicated
hardware. A Pentium IV is a general processing machine, which can do a wide
range of things. A smartcard has to only accomplish a limited range of tasks
and
so can be adapted to those tasks, to a degree.

It is highly unlikely that academics do not know about the algorithms used
in
smartcard technology. It is in the interests of the manufacturer to make the
details
known to academics, since an academic breaking the technology is potentially
a lot less damaging than a criminal doing so. I think I even know an
academic
who was working on breaking all manner of electronic systems such as this.
He
actually broke them at regular intervals, which must have been terrible for
the
manufacturers, but as I say, some of those things aren't terribly secure.
Others
of course have proven to be perfectly secure.

When I lived in Europe, I refused to use a card called a ChipKnip, for
carrying
electronic cash around with me. Not only did I not believe it to be secure
(based
only on the track record of such systems, not on any special knowledge of
the
particular security of ChipKnip per se), but I did not want every
transaction that
I carried out being recorded on some central computer somewhere and used for
manipulating my consumer choices. I also didn't like the idea that my cash
could
be corrupted by cosmic rays. And I didn't like the smell of the card anyway.
Real
cash has a certain smell to it.

Don't know if that answers some of your questions. I know very little about
such
things and only what I've heard at various meetings, etc. It is not my
specialty.
The other people here will be able to say much more.

Bill.
Received on Tue Jan 17 16:49:07 2006