[8726] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Tamperproof devices and backdoors
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (dmolnar)
Fri May 25 08:00:44 2001
Date: Fri, 25 May 2001 04:23:00 -0400 (EDT)
From: dmolnar <dmolnar@hcs.harvard.edu>
To: Enzo Michelangeli <em@em.no-ip.com>
Cc: <cryptography@wasabisystems.com>, <coderpunks@toad.com>
In-Reply-To: <002d01c0e4ba$eb3fa280$011010ac@ima.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.OSF.4.33.0105250420121.22259-100000@hcs.harvard.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
On Fri, 25 May 2001, Enzo Michelangeli wrote:
> On the Other Other Hand, I vaguely remember a neat paper by Matt Blaze
> some years ago that shows that certain classes of back doors, like
> "good" back doors in conventional crypto systems, are equivalent in
> difficulty to building a public key system. Anyone remember the name
> of the paper and the exact content?
Skimming the papers on his web page, I would guess it's related to
M. Blaze, J. Feigenbaum and F.T. Leighton, "Master-Key Cryptosytems."
Abstract presented at Crypto '95 (rump session), Santa Barbara, CA, August
1995
http://www.crypto.com/papers/mkcs.ps
which opens by defining a "Master-Key Cryptosystem" and then goes on to
show that a MKCS implies a PKCS. The public key is the cryptosystem with a
back door. The private key is the back door/master key.
-David
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