From: an5877@anon.penet.fi (deadbeat)
Date: Fri, 3 Jun 94 15:18:54 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Black Eye for NSA, NIST, and Denning
Message-ID: <9406032148.AA09753@anon.penet.fi>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



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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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