From: Weld Pond <weld@l0pht.com>
Date: Thu, 12 Oct 95 14:18:00 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: FWD: International Encryption Protocols
Message-ID: <Pine.BSD/.3.91.951012170741.12446A-100000@l0pht.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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To: "Frank O'Dwyer" <fod@fws.ilo.dec.com>
cc: firewalls@GreatCircle.COM (Firewalls Mailing List)
From: Justin Mason <jmason@iona.ie>
Subject: BoS: Re: International 
Encryption Protocols 

Frank O'Dwyer sez:

>After all, if the CoCom countries _weren't_ willing to sell each other 
>crypto equipment, how could they spy on one another?  :-)
>
>(Actually the :-) may not be necessary - I believe there was a story
> in the news recently about the UK 'authorities' snooping on Irish
> official traffic carried on UK-supplied equipment.)

Almost right -- it was the UK surveillance service (GCHQ) snooping on
Irish official traffic carried on US-supplied crypto equipment.
Apparently, the equipment in question had a "back door", courtesy of
the NSA; when GCHQ found out that the Irish govt were using this
equipment, they had only to ask their NSA pals for the details.

I only heard the details myself via a popular-science program on crypto
;), so the so-called back door may not have been a deliberately
weakened algorithm, it may have been a set of keys from an key-escrow
repository or some such.

--j.

      Weld Pond   -  weld@l0pht.com   -   http://www.l0pht.com/~weld
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