Re: What's the secret message?

DES Challenge Lists (deslists@dopey.verser.frii.com)
Thu, 19 Jun 1997 05:01:11 -0600

> Subject: What's the secret message?
>
> The announcement Rocke sent to the list, as well as the press release,
> says that
>
> "Strong cryptography makes the world a safer place."
>
> But the new DESCHALL homepage itself says that
>
> "The unknown message is: Strong encryption makes the world a safer place."
>
> So which is it? Does strong cryptography make the world a safer place,
> or does strong encryption make the world a safer place? :-)

Thanks for pointing this out.

The contest provided a fixed, 24-byte ASCII string at the start
of the message: "The unknown message is: "

That was followed by a variable-length message:
"Strong cryptography makes the world a safer place."

That was followed by six pad bytes of 0x06 to bring the total length of
the message to a multiple of 8 bytes.

The clients searched for a key that yielded the first 8 bytes: "The unkn".

The home page has been corrected.

-- Rocke