[14664] in Cypherpunks
Re: LEAF forgery
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Perry E. Metzger)
Fri Jun 3 08:28:33 1994
To: VACCINIA@uncvx1.oit.unc.edu
Cc: cypherpunks@toad.com
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 03 Jun 1994 00:09:50 EDT."
<01HD339SYNZ6001KXP@UNCVX1.OIT.UNC.EDU>
Reply-To: perry@imsi.com
Date: Fri, 03 Jun 1994 08:22:52 -0400
From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry@imsi.com>
VACCINIA@uncvx1.oit.unc.edu says:
> It is indeed a great achievement to best the NSA at its own game. This hack
> allows secure transmission and closes the LEAF backdoor. However, this only
> strengthens my belief that they don't really need this LEAF access, can you
> say trapdoor?
Your belief is without evidence. Its a supposition. I'd say that the
NSA has a lot to lose by putting holes in Skipjack.
None the less, I wouldn't use Skipjack, because I don't trust things I
don't know the design of. Unless people can widely examine Skipjack
I'd say it isn't trustworthy.
There also is, of course, a very slim chance that they were silly
enough to make Skipjack intentionally weak. However, that isn't a
major factor IMHO.
Perry
