Espionage-enabled Lotus notes.

I've come up with a new term to describe the type of 'improved' security
in the new International edition of Lotus Notes:

'espionage-enabled'

It's specifically built for export, and has a backdoor to enable USG agents
to read the messages more easily. From the viewpoint of a foreign purchaser,
'espionage-enabled' seems an appropriate term.

If we spread this term sufficiently, we may be able to discourage the 
widespread adoption of this half-measure, and increase the pressure for
good, unencumbered crypto.

speaking only for myself,

Peter Trei
ptrei@acm.org

I've been discussing the Lotus notes escrowed key reduction with some 
knowledgeable people. The first time I heard it suggested was by Adi Shamir at a 
talk by the deputy director of the NSA at MIT.

The problem with this system is that it is quite likely to suceed. Unlike 
Clipper which made unfettered access to encrypted material possible the escrowed 
key strength reduction means that the FBI can tap a significant number of 
locations, just not all of them.

It will be very hard to argue effectively against this idea in Congress. Much 
harder than the Clipper chip which was dead on arrival.


	Phill

An individual almost but not quite entirely unlike Richard Martin wrote:
> They've forced a major company (they don't come much more major
> than IBM) to ship a product which actually helps them in both
> aspects of their mandate. Communications interception of foreign
> industries' groupware is now easier for the U.S. than for any other
> country, while (and this must be granted) the communications
> security of American industries will be somewhat improved by this
> move.

But how does this affect the use of Notes for US companies with  
foreign offices?  If foreign offices are required to use the "export  
version" (which IS supposedly interoperable with the domestic  
version), then Notes use between a foreign office and US office will  
have a 40 bit key as far as the government is concerned.  This  
assumption may be incorrect, but until I know what the effective key  
size is as seen by the government when the export and domestic  
versions communicate, I have to assume that the export version will  
have to dominate the effective key length.  In other words, the  
domestic version will be able to handle and generate keys with the  
24 government accesible bits, but naturally, keys generated by the  
domestic version will not be usable by the export version.

Are US businesses willing to swallow this when the use is purely  
internal to the company?  Does the national security argument hold  
up in this situation?

This really does so little to improve the security situation that I  
can see why Mr. Ozzie is not comfortable with this compromise as  
anything but a short-term solution.  I hope his statement is  
sincere.  I'm asking a lot of questions at this point because my own  
opinions are not fully formed on all of the relevant issues.

---
Paul M. Cardon
System Officer - Capital Markets Systems
First Chicago NBD Corporation (for whom I do not opine)

MD5 (/dev/null) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e

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On Jan 18, 11:38am, hallam@w3.org wrote:
> The problem with this system is that it is quite likely to suceed. Unlike
> Clipper which made unfettered access to encrypted material possible the
> escrowed key strength reduction means that the FBI can tap a significant
> number of locations, just not all of them.

The Lotus `solution' seems to be the action of an American company
shipping a product which effectively says to foreign users, "We don't
care about you as a market." That this is the so-called "export"
version is ironic. The keys are escrowed with the U.S. government,
and no one else. The French government should rightly cry foul, for
this is (a) encryption where they don't have the keys and (b) encryption
where another government *does*.

For the world where industrial espionage is supposed to be becoming
the top priority and  where there have already been ugly accusations among
teams at trade talks, the NSA has just scored a victory on two fronts.

They've forced a major company (they don't come much more major than IBM)
to ship a product which actually helps them in both aspects of their
mandate. Communications interception of foreign industries' groupware
is now easier for the U.S. than for any other country, while (and
this must be granted) the communications security of American
industries will be somewhat improved by this move.

This is a win for the NSA, whose mandate (much as their Canadian
counterpart) would appear to read:
	We help you make sure that no-one can read your e-mail, except us.

The sick thing is, Notes will probably *still* be the best choice,
despite these matters (compared to competition from other similar software,
and from the web). For all the `Notes is dead, long live the web'
talk, the web as I've used it lacks authentication and access control
beyond an all-or-none system. I'll go check w3.org again.

richard

- --
Richard Martin
Alias|Wavefront - Toronto Office [Co-op Software Developer, Games Team]
rmartin@aw.sgi.com/g4frodo@cdf.toronto.edu      http://www.io.org/~samwise
Trinity College UofT ChemPhysCompSci 9T7+PEY=9T8 Shad Valley Waterloo 1992


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