On Mon, Jul 27, 1998 at 09:20:10PM -0400, mgraffam@mhv.net wrote:
On Mon, 27 Jul 1998, Kent Crispin wrote:
It occurs to me that an interesting use for the eff des cracker would be the following: since the government asserts that DES is safe, then a DES encrypted archive of crypto code should be exportable.
No. Encrypting with DES, or any symmetric cipher does not destroy the information, which is what is controlled. Even losing the key does not destroy the information, as we all know: keys can be recovered it is just a matter of the work involved.
Apparently we are talking at cross purposes. Currently, there are rather large ftp crypto archives that are "protected" by a scheme using randomly generated directory names. This is considered acceptable by the export authorities. The export authorities would have a hard time, therefore, arguing that an archive protected by encrypting the files with DES would not be sufficiently protected. It would be a stunt, of course. Merely another stunt to illustrate the inconsistencies in the export laws. [...]
We don't need encrypted archives floating around.. we need to show that, like cars, crypto devices (programs or otherwise!) are useful even if they can be used by bad people for bad purposes.
Abstract things like exporting a hunk of random crap and arguing about it don't achieve this, and will never do so in the minds of laymen with no real interest in crypto.
I quite disagree. Frequently a clever stunt does engage the layman -- at least the intelligent laymen. -- Kent Crispin, PAB Chair "No reason to get excited", kent@songbird.com the thief he kindly spoke... PGP fingerprint: B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44 61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55 http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html