[13827] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: traffic analysis of phone calls?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Vin McLellan)
Sat Jul 12 19:18:06 2003
X-Original-To: cryptography@metzdowd.com
X-Original-To: cryptography@metzdowd.com
Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2003 12:30:00 -0400
To: Steve Bellovin <smb@research.att.com>, cryptography@metzdowd.com
From: Vin McLellan <vin@theworld.com>
In-Reply-To: <20030711212803.E5E1A7B4D@berkshire.research.att.com>
Personal
(Use it if you'd like, but keep me out of it.)
Steve Bellovin wrote:
>Slightly off-topic, but a reminder of the sort of thing that ordinary
>crypto doesn't hide.
>
>http://www.silicon.com/news/500009-500001/1/5093.html?rolling=2
>
>IT Myths: Colombian drugs gang's mainframe-assisted assassinations?
Reminds me of a Supercomputer system admin I ran across in California in
the mid-1980s -- a part time Deputy Sheriff -- who (at the request of a
California state LEA, and with the approval of his boss) was banging away
at the DES-encrypted records of a guy, alleged to be a bookkeeper or
financial analyst for a Columbia drug cartel, who had been arrested in
California.
The story he told me was that the Deputy had been asked to try to
brute-force the encryption on the file after the NSA and DEA had refused to
attempt it.
Using free cycles on his corporate machine, he was into the project for a
couple of months when a guy from the NSA showed up and convinced his boss
that his effort was counterproductive to national security -- apparently
because it threatened the reputation of DES.
At the time, I was more impressed that the Columbian was using a PC crypto
package that apparently did not have an operational weaknesses that was
then common in almost all commercial encryption packages for PCs.
Hope all is well for you and yours.
_Vin
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