[6606] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Interesting point about the declassified Capstone spec
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Peter Gutmann)
Fri Feb 11 14:09:58 2000
From: pgut001@cs.auckland.ac.nz (Peter Gutmann)
To: cryptography@c2.net
Reply-To: pgut001@cs.auckland.ac.nz
X-Charge-To: pgut001
Date: Sat, 12 Feb 2000 08:02:44 (NZDT)
Message-ID: <95029576431183@kahu.cs.auckland.ac.nz>
Late last year the Capstone spec ("CAPSTONE (MYK-80) Specifications",
R21-TECH-30-95) was partially declassified as the result of a FOIA lawsuit[0].
The document is stamped "TOP SECRET UMBRA" on every page. UMBRA is a SIGINT
codeword, not an INFOSEC one, so the people who designed the thing were very
clear about what it was to be used for at a time when it was still being touted
as a privacy device (the fact that it's described in the abstract as "a SIGINT
friendly replacement for DES" probably doesn't help either).
Peter.
[0] I don't know if it's online, they were handed out at Crypto'99.
