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Information *will* be forthcoming. Hang on. Perry's right. Several of us have seen Matt's paper, and the attacks really do work. (Even NSA admits that.) But out of courtesy to Matt, we'd rather leave it to him to discuss the details. --Steve Bellovin
> Information *will* be forthcoming. Hang on. > > Perry's right. Several of us have seen Matt's paper, and the attacks > really do work. (Even NSA admits that.) But out of courtesy to Matt, > we'd rather leave it to him to discuss the details. > > > --Steve Bellovin If Matt's attack works, and Clipper/Capstone/Tessera/etc. has to be redesigned, some issues are pretty apparent: * the NSA _apparently_ fell down on the job...where was their own "Tiger Team" trying to break the proposed system? * ditto for the whitewash by the "Blue Ribbon Panel," the one that Dorothy Denning was on (chaired?) and that met for a _whole weekend_ (wow!) to bless the Capstone algorithm. Not that I really expected otherwise. * Combined with Micali's talk of a lawsuit, the slow acceptance of Clipper (Cypherpunks and others have helped to make Clipper a very dirty word, thus slowing any corporate acceptance that I suspect the NSA was hoping for), and these problems, the Clipper program seems to be in disarray. So, NSA's vaunted crypto capabilities seem to be waning. (I'm sure there are still many competent folks at the Fort, of course.) Their venture in to the commercial world seems pretty flawed. Which is good. And this stumblebum episode can be exploited by us. At the risk of sounding like the tmp'ararily insane one, "hee hee." --Tim May -- .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."
Tim wrote: | * the NSA _apparently_ fell down on the job...where was their own | "Tiger Team" trying to break the proposed system? At today's talk at MIT (Morris & Unkenholz of the NSA) Morris said several times that the escrow system had to be produced in a hurry, on top of the Skipjack algorithim, which was designed previously and 'sitting in a storeroom.' (boy, I'd like to FOIA that storeroom. :) I didn't get a chance to ask why more time wasn't taken to prepare the escrow system to be more robust, since there were already a lot of political questions that these two really weren't in a position to answer. Adam -- Adam Shostack adam@bwh.harvard.edu Politics. From the greek "poly," meaning many, and ticks, a small, annoying bloodsucker.