From: tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)
Date: Thu, 2 Jun 94 11:07:27 PDT
To: smb@research.att.com
Subject: Black Eye for NSA, NIST, and Denning
In-Reply-To: <9406021623.AA19701@toad.com>
Message-ID: <199406021806.LAA02504@netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



> 	 Information *will* be forthcoming. Hang on.
> 
> Perry's right.  Several of us have seen Matt's paper, and the attacks
> really do work.  (Even NSA admits that.)  But out of courtesy to Matt,
> we'd rather leave it to him to discuss the details.
> 
> 
> 		--Steve Bellovin

If Matt's attack works, and Clipper/Capstone/Tessera/etc. has to be
redesigned, some issues are pretty apparent:

* the NSA _apparently_ fell down on the job...where was their own
"Tiger Team" trying to break the proposed system?

* ditto for the whitewash by the "Blue Ribbon Panel," the one that
Dorothy Denning was on (chaired?) and that met for a _whole weekend_
(wow!) to bless the Capstone algorithm. Not that I really expected
otherwise.

* Combined with Micali's talk of a lawsuit, the slow acceptance of
Clipper (Cypherpunks and others have helped to make Clipper a very
dirty word, thus slowing any corporate acceptance that I suspect the
NSA was hoping for), and these problems, the Clipper program seems to
be in disarray.

So, NSA's vaunted crypto capabilities seem to be waning. (I'm sure
there are still many competent folks at the Fort, of course.) Their
venture in to the commercial world seems pretty flawed.

Which is good. And this stumblebum episode can be exploited by us.

At the risk of sounding like the tmp'ararily insane one, "hee hee."


--Tim May


-- 
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