solving the wrong problem

Peter Gutmann pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz
Tue Aug 9 05:46:06 EDT 2005


Peter Fairbrother <zenadsl6186 at zen.co.uk> writes:
>Peter Gutmann wrote:
>> Peter Fairbrother <zenadsl6186 at zen.co.uk> writes:
>>> Didn't the people who did US/USSR nuclear arms verification do something
>>> very similar, except the characterised surface was sparkles in plastic
>>> painted on the missile rather than paper?
>>
>> Yes.  The intent was that forging the fingerprint on a warhead should cost as
>> much or more than the warhead itself.
>
>Talking of solving the wrong problem, that's a pretty bad metric - forging
>should cost the damage an extra warhead would do, rather than the cost of an
>extra warhead. That's got to be in the trillions, rather than a few hundred
>thousand for another warhead.

The cost was US$12M per warhead.  I think that's sufficient.

Peter.

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