On May 18, 2014, at 9:47 AM, Henry Baker <hbaker1@pipeline.com> wrote:
Schneier should now be smelling burnt hair:
Seems he isn't: Despite headlines to the contrary, this does not have any cryptanalytic application -- unless they can generalize the result, which seems unlikely to me. See: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/05/advances_in_sol.html Of course he might be wrong.... Regards, Jon
"In this [Joux2014] work, we present a new discrete logarithm algorithm, in the same vein as in [Joux2013] that uses an asymptotically more efficient descent approach. The main result gives a quasi-polynomial heuristic complexity for the DLP in finite fields of small characteristic. ... It remains super-polynomial in the size of the input, but offers a major asymptotic improvement compared to [Joux2013]."
The cool thing about this research is the beautiful new mathematics. Although DLP's may not be useful for crypto much longer, I fully expect them to be useful for many other things in the future.
At 09:11 AM 5/18/2014, Jon Ziegler wrote:
I don't think this is new. See: http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2013/08/is-cryptopocalypse-nigh.html for Schneier's comments. He observes that we'll know when there's something to worry about when cryptographers are running around like their hair is on fire.