Re: Rander box and other stuff

Eric (Hollander; my last post was to Eric Hughes)-

Your "small laptop with (goodies)" was EXACTLY what we were trying to go for
in 1983/84.  This was the "Cryptex CS-3" project.  Remember that there was
no such thing as a laptop at the time.  What I was proposing was a
self-contained portable encryption terminal.  It would have measured about a
foot wide by 10" long by about 2-3" thick, had an LCD for about six to eight
lines of text at a time, two 3-1/2" FDDs, a pair of sockets for "Codepacks"
(hardware key storage devices which would have been tamper-resistant and
password protected), a good quality keyboard, a modem with modular jack and
optional acoustic couplers (for payphones: low-tech anonymity)... the
Tempest feature would have been achieved by putting 100dB of white noise on
the metal housing, which would have been imperfect but decent enough.  There
was no plan for a hard drive; the operating software would have been a
simple line editor and the crypto routines, all burned into ROM and part of
the main processor board.  No plans for thermite linings at the time either,
though we did have a password routine with a duress option, which would have
erased anything on the FDDs or the Codepacks.  

My first intended market for this thing was the political dissident
community, where communication has always suffered to a small but noticeable
degree by the "we can't talk on the phone" factor.  It never got going
because the market was too small.  Now it would seem the time has definitely
come... though whatever ultimately arises out of the cypherpunk scene will
be many many times more sophisticated and versatile.  

-gg

I thought of another thing to add to my wish list for a dedicated
cryptosystem:  analog input and output, for use as a phone line scambler.
Such a system could be manufactured for not too much money, I think.  It
would be like a specialized version of the Apple Newton.  Apple would never
make something like this, though; they are becoming good buddies with our
favorite agency.  Also you would probably need a permit to own thermite.

e

>> Also you would probably need a permit to own thermite.
	I don't think there's a problem with owning it or making it --
only (perhaps) selling it and transporting it; thermite is not
strictly an explosive.
	You may wish to consider alternate ways of destroying the
data, especially if you wish to ever transport the device on a
commercial airline; if you've only got one RAM device that has
critical data in it, then simply arrange for the battery backup
circuit to have a "high current mode", perhaps feeding more of the
pins -- a "light emitting RAM" should be just as blank as one burned
through by thermite.

>> cryptosystem:  analog input and output, for use as a phone line scambler.
>> Such a system could be manufactured for not too much money, I think.  It
	Let's see -- an ISDN-quality (quality? I use the term loosely)
codec should be under $50 single quantity, the data rate isn't very
high so you don't need much of a CPU (6811 might even be enough, and
they're easy to interface to things -- lots of on-chip I/O). You'd
need a modem-style encoder for the output (running digital from
box-to-box -- "analog" scrambling (Time or Frequency domain) is way
too easy to break) so maybe another $50 DSP chip... after all, you
don't need to support 30 different baud rates, just one data rate with
perhaps a low-line-quality backoff. The connectors and the box are
probably the major recurring cost (the chip prices will go way down in
quantity.) Am I missing anything? The technology level of the Newton
seems to be a bit of overkill (unless you actually want that kind of
user interface.)

					_Mark_ <eichin@cygnus.com>
					<eichin@athena.mit.edu>
: note that this is an unsigned message.

Let's see -- an ISDN-quality (quality? I use the term loosely)
    codec should be under $50 single quantity, the data rate isn't very
    high so you don't need much of a CPU (6811 might even be enough, and
    they're easy to interface to things -- lots of on-chip I/O). You'd
    need a modem-style encoder for the output (running digital from
    box-to-box -- "analog" scrambling (Time or Frequency domain) is way
    too easy to break) so maybe another $50 DSP chip... after all, you
    don't need to support 30 different baud rates, just one data rate with
    perhaps a low-line-quality backoff. 

The codec is pretty cheap, but you want a nice low bit rate so you can
send the encrypted data over the phone.  Some talk of how to do this
is happening on sci.crypt.  I have a scheme which I plan to float
around at the cypherpunks meeting on Saturday.  However, the hardware
ends up being on the expensive side ($150 or so).