At 11:38 AM 1/18/96 -0500, hallam@w3.org wrote:
The problem with this system is that it is quite likely to suceed. Unlike Clipper which made unfettered access to encrypted material possible the escrowed key strength reduction means that the FBI can tap a significant number of locations, just not all of them.
40-unknown-bit RC4 may take a week for an ICE workstation or a herd of net-coordinated workstations, but it would be much faster to crack on a specialized machine actually designed for RC4. I think Eric's estimate was $25-50K for a machine that could do it in 15 minutes, built out of programmable gate arrays. That's not $10,000/crack, or $584, but $0.25-.50. Would they crack all the keys they wanted for a quarter each? Sure; at that rate it's probably cheaper to crack them than read them (though in reality they'd feed most of them to keyword scanners.)
It will be very hard to argue effectively against this idea in Congress. Much harder than the Clipper chip which was dead on arrival.
You may be right. They keep making outrageous demands, and "compromising" on less outrageous ones. Something prominently not mentioned in the article was "escrow agents" for the 24 bits of wiretap-support key; apparently foreigners don't get even that much due process. Nor was there a clarification of whether all the software has the same wiretap key (probable) or each copy has a different wiretap key (the Clipper model.) If it's just one key, then nobody's mail is safe. #-- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts@ix.netcom.com, Pager/Voicemail 1-408-787-1281 # # "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" used to mean us watching # the government, not the other way around....