-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Out of curiousity, is anyone aware of whether the USSR employed PAL's (Permissive Activation Links) in their strategic nuclear weaponary? If so, is anyone aware of how secure the PAL's the Soviets actually used were? There was a rumor on USENET some time back that the Soviets were using RSA in their PAL's, but it sounded too much like an urban myth to me.
I suspect they must have had a PAL-like mechanism, although at least some of their weapons rely on interlocks which can only be triggered by a KGB-controlled activator. I remember the USENET rumor as being that the _US_ was using RSA as a component of the comm systems used to transmit Emergency War Orders (EWOs) to US forces. No one has confirmed that, but it certainly seems plausible. Come to think of it, the PALs on US weapons are primarily electromechanical in nature. You get the EWO, you punch in the supplied code into the PAL, and off you go. I'm not sure that RSA would a whole lot of use as part of the PAL mechanism itself (except for signature verification, which is certainly important.) - -Paul - -- Paul Robichaux, KD4JZG | "Information is the currency of democracy." perobich@ingr.com | - some old guy named Thomas Jefferson Of course I don't speak for Intergraph. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6 iQCVAgUBLj+d86fb4pLe9tolAQEllwQAmrjDgCgTwdER8RfyUKybdY9IyVtahYdz OfrdFi813sHZqKCw+ONzCL5sPlIAtLeZzNsqUL8MarM66EbSGzdSilMxVc32eAKe p1j7SXvIVj9gWKM2AS+i0AcEv9HIla417zovTGtowi2stlp34KmhHK7WWGuWqxD+ iWLFcWh9mcg= =BONM -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----