From: Herb Sutter <herbs@connobj.com>
Date: Thu, 14 Dec 1995 13:56:12 +0800
To: Jim_Miller@bilbo.suite.com
Subject: Re: Attacking Clipper with timing info?
Message-ID: <199512140443.XAA19961@gold.interlog.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 20:10 12.13.1995 CST, Loren James Rittle wrote:
>If it could be shown that Clipper chips require a fixed amount
>of time/current to encode/decode traffic, then we could conclude
>one of the following:
>
>(B1) The NSA knew about the issue and compensated for it.
>(B2) The NSA didn't know about the issue and got lucky.
>
>I discount B2 as a valid option.  Actually, if the answer was B1,
>my respect for the NSA would creep up a notch. :-)

Remember those carefully-chosen S-box numbers for DES and how, years later,
how they just happened to turn out to be optimal for defending against the
newly-discovered (in non-military circles) technique of differential
cryptanalysis... :-)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Herb Sutter (herbs@connobj.com)

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