From: Anonymous <nobody@replay.com>
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1998 11:21:22 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: do not fold spindle or mutilate
Message-ID: <199811210255.DAA02082@replay.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



At 08:15 PM 11/19/98 -0500, Bill Stewart wrote:
>Encryption is NOT just "mathematics, period".  It's mathematics,
>plus operations, password management, key distribution,
>keeping track of who's allowed to see what, 
>plus hardware and operating systems to run the mathematics on,
>and unless you're running it in wetware, it's also
>computer security to protect the hardware and operating systems.
>And it's black operations to go out and steal the other guys'
>hardware and keys and yellow-sticky-notes and crack their OSs.

Actually, to a sufficiently advanced civilization, these are
all describable with mathematics.

>In some contexts, especially real people's contexts,
>your PC may be a fine place to run the encryption,
>but in an NSA / DoD context, especially when there's a war on,
>the safest way to manage many of these things is to use
>dedicated tamper-resistant hardware with the users on one side

Nota bene: tamper-detection + zeroizing >> tamper resistance.

--Pasty aliens spied my mugs