Minimal Key Lengths for Symmetric Ciphers to Provide Adequate Commercial Security. A Report by an Ad Hoc Group of Cryptographers and Computer Scientists

by Matt Blaze

Paperback

Published January 1, 1996

About the author

Matt Blaze (Ph.D., Computer Science; Princeton University, 1993; M.A., Computer Sciecne, Princeton, 1989; M.S., Computer Science, Columbia University, 1988; B.S., City University of New York (Hunter College), 1986) is a computer security, cryptography, network communication, and surveillance technology researcher and holds the McDevitt Chair of Computer Science and Law at Georgetown University. Previously he was an associate professor of computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, where he served as director of the Distributed Computing Laboratory. Prior to joining the faculty at Penn, he was for 12 years a member of the research staff at AT&T Labs (previously known as AT&T Bell Labs) in New Jersey.

A focus of his research is on the properties and capabilities of surveillance technology (both lawful and illicit) in the context of modern digital systems and communications networks. He has testified before the U.S. Congress on related matters, and, in 1994, discovered weaknesses in the NSA's "Clipper" key escrow encryption system that led to that system's abandonment before it was widely deployed.