[5665] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Why did White House change its mind on crypto?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Adam Shostack)
Fri Sep 17 18:31:13 1999
Date: Fri, 17 Sep 1999 18:20:33 -0400
From: Adam Shostack <adam@homeport.org>
To: Arnold Reinhold <reinhold@world.std.com>
Cc: minow@pobox.com, Greg Broiles <gbroiles@netbox.com>,
Russell Nelson <nelson@crynwr.com>, cryptography@c2.net,
cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Message-ID: <19990917182033.A1484@weathership.homeport.org>
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In-Reply-To: <v04210100b4085a1e6bd5@[24.218.56.100]>
On Fri, Sep 17, 1999 at 04:58:26PM -0400, Arnold Reinhold wrote:
| I think we should take Deputy Secretary of Defense John Hambre at his
| word (from the White House briefing):
|
| "MR. HAMRE: ... The national security establishment -- the Department
| of Defense, the intelligence community -- strongly supports this
| strategy. Indeed, we created the first draft of the strategy and
| presented it to our colleagues in the interagency process. We in the
| Defense Department did it because I think we feel the problem more
| intensively than does anyone else in the United States. We are the
| largest-single entity that operates in cyberspace. No one is as large
| as we are. We are just as vulnerable in cyberspace as is anybody, and
| we strongly need the sorts of protections that come with strong
| encryption and a key infrastructure that we're calling for in this
| strategy."
|
| I suspect his security experts realized that export controls were
| ineffective in keeping crypto out of the hands of bad guys and that
| the DOD was suffering because the commercial products on which it
| depends lack strong security.
To pick a nit, strong crypto will not solve a large number of the
security problems we possess today. It will make a class of attacks
harder, but not the easiest class, which is to exploit flaws in
software and configuration to bypass controls.
Adam
--
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
-Hume
