[44118] in Cypherpunks
Re: GOST for sale
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (wlkngowl@unix.asb.com)
Wed Nov 29 07:11:25 1995
From: wlkngowl@unix.asb.com
To: Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>, "C'Punks" <cypherpunks@toad.com>
Date: Wed, 29 Nov 1995 12:08:52 GMT
On Mon, 27 Nov 1995 11:53:26 -0800, you wrote:
>At 03:43 AM 11/24/95 +0100, Mats Bergstrom <asgaard@sos.sll.se> wrote:
>>According to a short article in a Swedish newspaper (DN)
>>with the title 'Spy Code of KGB can make computers safe',
>>JETICO INC., located in Finland (Tammerfors), introduced
>>a new crypto system on the world market last week. It's
>>based on GOST, the Russian federal standard algorithm.
[..]
>From what I've read of GOST, it's really a family of cyphers with
>different sets of S-boxes - routine military gets one set, top secret
>gets another, civilian govt another, etc. Aside from possible
>differences in security level for the S-boxes, one motivation is
>that you can't take civilian govt decryptors and use them to read
>or forge top secret military crypto, etc. If this is correct,
>then some sets of S-boxes probably do have trapdoors (at least
>susceptibility to differential cryptanalysis_; how good are the
>ones that Jetico is selling, what credentials do they have to
>convince us their cryptanalysis is good enough, and why are they
>doing parts of it in hardware?
Based on the few articles I've read, S-Boxes are generated randomly,
or (doubtful in this case) generated from the passphrase, making an
even larger keyspace.
--Rob
