[14712] in Cypherpunks
Black Eye for NSA, NIST, and Denning
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (deadbeat)
Fri Jun 3 18:24:30 1994
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
From: an5877@anon.penet.fi (deadbeat)
X-Anonymously-To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Reply-To: an5877@anon.penet.fi
Date: Fri, 3 Jun 1994 21:48:53 UTC
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On the one hand, I applaud Dr. Blaze for the discoveries based on his
black-box analysis of the NSA product. How fortunate to have him
working in a laboratory seeded with this gear.
On the other hand, I am amused at the "big deal" being made about such
a minor result. This "protocol failure" exposes the NSA product to no
new threats. If one's objective is to use SKIPJACK but to defeat key
escrow, pre-encryption is easier, conceptually simpler, and may be more
secure, depending on what is actually inside the SKIPJACK code.
I won't ask why the big deal is being made about all of this -- the
agenda surrounding Clipper and friends is clearly a political one, not
a technical one, so it is no surprise to hear even the technical voices,
i.e., this list, trumpeting Blaze's paper as though it were a dagger in
the heart of SKIPJACK. But let's all acknowledge the technical weight
and importance of Blaze's result for what it is: minuscule.
DEADBEAT <na5877@anon.penet.fi>
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