NODE a0947880Re: LEAF forgery
VACCINIA@UNCVX1.OIT.UNC.EDUThu, 2 Jun 94 21:04:46 PDT
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Perry wrote about Matt Blaze's Awesome new hack:
>Matt Blaze should be commended for finding such a big hole. As with most
>such ideas, its obvious in retrospect but took some good thought to come
>up with.
It is indeed a great achievement to best the NSA at its own game. This hack
allows secure transmission and closes the LEAF backdoor. However, this only
strengthens my belief that they don't really need this LEAF access, can you
say trapdoor? I still wouldn't be sending anything I wanted to keep a secret
using TESSERA, even with a newly generated LEAF field. I'd wager that Matt
wouldn't either.
Scott G. Morham !The First,
Vaccinia@uncvx1.oit.unc.edu ! Second
PGP Public Keys by Request ! and Third Levels
! of Information Storage and Retrieval
!DNA,
! Biological Neural Nets,
! Cyberspace
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NODE de431a65Re: LEAF forgery
"Perry E. Metzger" <perry@imsi.com>Fri, 3 Jun 94 05:23:41 PDT
VACCINIA@uncvx1.oit.unc.edu says:
> It is indeed a great achievement to best the NSA at its own game. This hack
> allows secure transmission and closes the LEAF backdoor. However, this only
> strengthens my belief that they don't really need this LEAF access, can you
> say trapdoor?
Your belief is without evidence. Its a supposition. I'd say that the
NSA has a lot to lose by putting holes in Skipjack.
None the less, I wouldn't use Skipjack, because I don't trust things I
don't know the design of. Unless people can widely examine Skipjack
I'd say it isn't trustworthy.
There also is, of course, a very slim chance that they were silly
enough to make Skipjack intentionally weak. However, that isn't a
major factor IMHO.
Perry