[8447] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Voice over OTP during WW2.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Trei, Peter)
Mon Jan 15 12:00:17 2001
Message-ID: <F504A8CEE925D411AF4A00508B8BE90A91EB3E@exna07.securitydynamics.com>
From: "Trei, Peter" <ptrei@rsasecurity.com>
To: "'cypherpunks@cyberpass.net'" <cypherpunks@cyberpass.net>,
"'cryptography@c2.net'" <cryptography@c2.net>
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2001 11:51:55 -0500
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain
http://www.nsa.gov/wwii/papers/start_of_digital_revolution.htm
Fascinating article at the NSA site about the
heroic efforts to provide long-distance secure voice
communications over radio.
The good folks at Bell Labs essentially invented
digitized, compressed voice, and encrypted it
using synchronized pairs of records of
random data at each end. Each terminal site
had 55 *tons* of equipment!
Apparently this astounding - and apparently
successful - effort was mostly declassified
back in '76, but I first heard about it in
Stevenson's Cryptonomicon last year.
A remarkable story.
Peter Trei
