[117079] in Cypherpunks
RE: Project: Hardening Crypto Against Big Brother's "BlackBag" Intrusions
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Kurt Buff)
Thu Aug 26 01:57:37 1999
From: "Kurt Buff" <kurtbuff@lightmail.com>
To: "'Sunder'" <sunder@brainlink.com>
Cc: <cypherpunks@cyberpass.net>
Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1999 22:42:59 -0700
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Reply-To: "Kurt Buff" <kurtbuff@lightmail.com>
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Agree with your comments, but the site does mention a 12MHz processor
and 128bytes(?!) of RAM, and a physical fuse to prevent file readout.
All sounds like a good start, but needs good verification to be sure.
Your website seems to be down, bummer.
Kurt
| -----Original Message-----
| From: Sunder [mailto:sunder@brainlink.com]
| Sent: Wednesday, August 25, 1999 13:24
| To: kurtbuff@lightmail.com
| Cc: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
| Subject: Re: Project: Hardening Crypto Against Big Brother's
| "BlackBag"
| Intrusions
|
|
|
|
| Kurt Buff wrote:
|
| > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
| > Hash: SHA1
| >
| > These two products are steps in the right direction...
| >
| > http://www.rainbow.com/ikey/index.html
|
| Interesting stuff. Not too clear on how these work. But, if
| the values
| stored on these keys are static, they won't need to do much
| work to capture
| them, just like a keyboard sniffer, one could write a USB
| dongle sniffer and a
| wrapper around the USB drivers of the machine to insert the
| same data without
| actually having the dongle.
|
| These suckers need to generate different data when they're
| connected. Data
| that can't be replicated/forged.
|
| Again, what's needed is a tamper proof device (tampering by
| physical access to
| the device or by some means to bypass the device in the
| software of the
| computer it's inserted in). This would require that the key
| do it's own on
| board crypto and not rely for ANYTHING coming from the host
| PC, other than a
| communication channel.
|
| If the PC can copy the data in the key, you're fucked. i.e.
| they need to be
| their own crypto engines, they can't just be ROM keys.
|
| > http://www.rfideas.com/
|
| This one looks a bit more like it would do this, but I've not
| found full info
| on these to confirm that.
|
| --
| ---------------------------- Kaos Keraunos Kybernetos
| --------------------
| + ^ + Sunder "The real aim of current policy
| is to /|\
| \|/ sunder@brainlink.com ensure the continued
| effectiveness of /\|/\
| <--*--> -------------------- OF US information warfare assets
| against\/|\/
| /|\ You're on the air. individuals,businesses and
| governments \|/
| + v + Say 'Hi' to Echelon in Europe and elsewhere" -- Ross
| Anderson
| ---------------------------- http://www.sunder.net
| -----------------------
| "The day that Microsoft makes a product that doesn't suck is
| the same day
| they start making vacuum cleaners."
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