Is the NSA really competent?

Here are the biggest breakthroughs in cryptography during the period
when the NSA has been the purported leader in the field, and 
has enjoyed by far the largest budget:

public key: Diffie, Hellman, Merkle, R.,S., A., etc.
key escrow: Micali  (and the current NSA/NIST scheme has all 
	the earmarks of being thrown on top of Skipjack at
	the last moment, after Micali had published, and
	perhaps even after Denning had discussed it).
DES: IBM
Skipjack: probably just a modified DES
IDEA: Swiss

Also zero-knowledge proofs, blind signatures, oblivious
transfer, BBS, and other recent advances were all discovered 
outside the NSA.

For all their vaunted competence, for all the mathematicians
they have been alleged to employ, despite having a cryptography
budget orders of magnitude larger than any other Western
crypto group, it looks like the NSA contribued to _none_ of 
the major advances in cryptography that occured during its zenith.

On Sun, 26 Jun 1994 catalyst-remailer@netcom.com wrote:

> Skipjack: probably just a modified DES

[stuff deleted...]

> crypto group, it looks like the NSA contribued to _none_ of 
						    ^^^^^^
> the major advances in cryptography that occured during its zenith.

If skipjack is really a 'major advance' (I won't state an opinion at this 
point) then it seems that they did indeed contribute to a major advance. 
At least one. Also if I remember my history right they had a lot to do 
with the original redesigning of the s-boxes in des.

Happy Hunting, -Chris.

______________________________________________________________________________
Christian Douglas Odhner     | "The NSA can have my secret key when they pry
cdodhner@indirect.com	     | it from my cold, dead, hands... But they shall
pgp 2.3 public key by finger | NEVER have the password it's encrypted with!"
cypherpunks         WOw            dCD           Traskcom          Team Stupid
  Key fingerprint =  58 62 A2 84 FD 4F 56 38  82 69 6F 08 E4 F1 79 11 
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crypto group, it looks like the NSA contribued to _none_ of 
   the major advances in cryptography that occured during its zenith.

Exactly.  It's not the NSA's job to contribute to major advances in
publicly-known cryptography.  In fact, you could probably even say
that it's their job to inhibit such advances...

-russ <nelson@crynwr.com>
Crynwr Software   | Crynwr Software sells packet driver support | ask4 PGP key
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Potsdam, NY 13676 | LPF member - ask me about the harm software patents do.