At 1:13 AM 1/31/96, Futplex wrote:
Bill Frantz writes:
One other small advantage I can see to using Lotus's crippled encryption. It disguises the fact that a message is actually (double) encrypted with PGP. Attackers have to break the 40 bits before they see the PGP encrypted data.
I don't understand. Are you saying that there's a special benefit to doing superencryption (GAK encryption over non-GAK encryption) when the GAK layer is Lotus Notes ?
Maybe what Bill was getting at is that a widely-deployed system of "fairly good" crypto (a la Clipper/Tessera) could have a silver lining. As many, many of us have noted for the past several years, if the authorities have to first jump through hoops (ostensibly), getting court orders, obtaining the LEAF/LEEF, etc., and only then do they determine that some kind of superencryption has been added, then this could make things worse for them than before. There are of course wrinkles: -- superencryption could be banned -- enforcement is problematic, and if there is only a tiny chance of catching that Fifth Horseman (the Superencryptor), then the penalties would have to be astronomically high, to satisfy the Basic Equation: (risk of getting caught) x (penalty if caught) > (payoff of the crime) -- interoperability. Hard to block it if done in text mode, PGP-style, but Lotus Notes will presumably be designed to make superencryption harder to do. And of course we can never cheer on a mandatory crypto scheme, for a variety of reasons. I'm just saying that we can look for silver linings, a way to make lemonade out of lemons. It may even be possible to nuke these NSA-enabled programs by publicizing ways of monkeywrenching them, as with superencryption. --Tim Boycott espionage-enabled software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 - 1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."