From: mpjohnso@nyx10.cs.du.edu (Michael Johnson)
Date: Thu, 3 Mar 94 22:41:04 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Export of "Top Secret Data Encryption Techniques"
Message-ID: <9403040639.AA28140@nyx10.cs.du.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



> >Has anyone heard of this book [_Top_Secret_ - Data Encryption Techniques] and 
...

> One interesting feature of the books I looked at was that one of them
> came with a floppy disk with code on it.  I didn't notice anything
> on the first few pages about "Not for export" or a mention that
> the government treats crypto as munitions that need special permits
> to export - I assume the authors are unaware of this, or that the
> NSA doesn't really care about this level of crypto any more than
> they care about rot-13 being exported :-) - but you'd think the
> publishers would notice....

I was curious about that, too, but found out that the NSA declared it to
be exportable.  Note that there is no requirement that exportable crypto
be marked as such.  I've looked at the stuff in the book, and determined
that I could probably crack most of it if I cared enough and had a fast
computer.  I also found that the author made a mistake in implementation
that could cause some messages to not decrypt even if you have the right
key, if you have a different brand of math coprocessor than the sender
had.  


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