From: "Vladimir Z. Nuri" <vznuri@netcom.com>
Date: Tue, 24 Dec 1996 12:26:18 -0800 (PST)
To: Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: clipper plans 4 sale (was Re: Earl Edwin Pitts, $224,000)
In-Reply-To: <199612170946.JAA00429@server.test.net>
Message-ID: <199612242026.MAA18998@netcom18.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



>
>In Ross Anderson's paper `Tamper Resistance - a Cautionary Note' (see
>http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/), there is a reference to the clipper
>chip having already been reverse engineered:
>
>Anderson writes: "We are reliably informed that at least one
>U.S. chipmaker reverse engineered the Clipper chip shortly after its
>launch."

that's really big news. what does this company plan to do with it?
note that reverse engineering would give the following benefits:

1. knowledge of the skipjack algorithm. supposedly the NSA based
a lot of security on it being secret-- they consider it so powerful
that no one should be able to use it for their own purposes. however
I wonder how much security they tried to invest in this scheme. the
#1 rule of crypto, of course, is to always assume your adversary
can get your algorithm.

2. given knowledge of the algorithm, people could use it for their
own purposes, or to make compatible clipper chips that don't use
key escrow.

of course, it would be interesting to see the govt response to
this reverse engineering. new laws? fines? imprisonment? frankly,
it would be fun to see them squirm like this.


CYPHERPUNKS-- this would be another big front page NYT article and
*severe* blow to the spook establishment if someone PUBLISHED this
algorithm in cyberspace.... just noting the obvious and not
encouraging anything ILLEGAL here, heh heh, <wink>