Matt Curtin
More info
- Known for
- DESCHALL, Snake Oil FAQ
- Company
- Interhack
- Book
- Brute Force (2005)
American security consultant who helped lead DESCHALL, the first public demonstration that DES could be broken.
In 1997 RSA Security offered a prize to anyone who could decrypt a DES-encrypted message. Rocke Verser kicked off a volunteer, distributed key search, and Curtin became one of its leaders. Roughly four months and thousands of machines later, the key turned up in June 1997. The plaintext read "Strong cryptography makes the world a safer place." Until then, officials had insisted 56 bits was plenty.
Curtin also wrote the Snake Oil FAQ, a field guide to crypto products that promise more than the mathematics allows, and told the DESCHALL story in Brute Force (2005). A year after DESCHALL, Deep Crack did the same job in days rather than months.