re: Re: Rander box and other stuff

U> In fact, now that we've dropped the hard drive and the 
 U> keyboard, it might as well just be a dedicated 
 U> crytosystem, make it about 10cmX10cmX1cm and give it an 
 U> ether port, an rs232 port, a pcmcia port and an rj11 port. 
 U>  It's doable and would provide the ultimate security. 

And if all this is a real consideration, it might be better to use a
tool that lets you use a completely non-physical key -- one you can
remember in your head.

Fit the tool to the job...

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Ok folks, sounds like its time to look into the guts of Telebits and
XyZel's and see if we can make cypher-processers of them.  Both have
real CPU's and DSP's, what more do you want?
		||ugh

Ok folks, sounds like its time to look into the guts of Telebits and
    XyZel's and see if we can make cypher-processers of them.  Both have
    real CPU's and DSP's, what more do you want?

Hardware devices tend to have barely enough processing power to 
do the function they were designed for---if there were some power
left over, the designers would have used a cheaper and weaker processor.

Why would you want to do encryption in your modem instead of on
the host cpu that the modem is talking to?

Folks had been talking about doing some crypto things in custom
hardware about the size of a Telebit.  Telebits are just computers
with ROM's in them and since Telebits are falling behind the tide of
telecommunications I thought it might be nice to reporgram them as
remote processers.  The DSP's are quite fast and might give us very
nice random numbers, the box has buffers and a CPU that can do flat
out UUCP 'g' with compression so is likely more processer then most of
the Fido systems out there currently.
  All around a nice box sitting there wasting, waiting to do something
usefull.

  So, maybe hook up the modem with a shielded cable, cut/add something
on the phone side so one of the phone line DSP can get random garbage
(it might be much easyer then that once someone looks at the design of
the things), reporgram the ROMS to add random noise software and maybe
even do some number crunching for you (lets see a T2500 has three
DSP's in it?) for encryption/decryption.
  This is all a bit far feched, but as time goes on there will be lots
of discarded Telebits (can't do V.32bis, V.fast, FAX, Voice, DSU/CSU,
etc.).  XyZel also has a smart modem that one can blast ROM's for.
  Just something to think about on rainey days...

		||ugh