Cypherfolks, Some info on Capstone and another program called "Tessera." -Tim From: mrr@scss3.cl.msu.edu (Mark Riordan) Newsgroups: sci.crypt Subject: Capstone & Preliminary Message Security Protocol Date: 28 Apr 1993 01:35:50 GMT Organization: Michigan State University Summary: Defense Message System to use Capstone chip Keywords: Clipper, Capstone, PMSP, Mykotronx, NSA An article in the 26 April 93 issue of Network World mentions encryption technology to be used in a proposed Department of Defence email network: Next year, the DOD will issue an RFP for a one million-user Defense Message System (DMS). DMS will not be completely compatible with X.400 messaging. Therefore, to make it easier for vendors to bid on what will be a non-standard email system, the DOS plan to release prototype source code for its version of X.400. The article contains the interesting sentence: "Along with source code, it will release the nonclassified encryption algorithm application called Preliminary Message Security Protocol (PMSP)." DMS places security features in the Mail User Agent, rather than the Message Transfer Agent, as is done with stock X.400. Furthermore, PMSP will use the NSA's Capstone public key algorithm, rather than RSA, which is used in X.400. Therefore, gateways will be required to translate between encryption systems when DMS is exchanging messages with other networks. As its data encryption algorithm, Capstone uses the same unpublished private-key algorithm as the Clipper chip. [In a Usenet posting, Dorothy Denning says that Capstone uses the Skipjack algorithm, the Digital Signature Standard (DSS), and the Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA).] Capstone chips will be provided by Mykotronx, Inc., the Torrance, Calif firm that also designed Clipper. Military DMS users will be issued PCMCIA-compliant cryptocards containing the Capstone chip. (PCMCIA is an add-on interface card standard oriented toward subnotebook PC compatibles.) This interface card is dubbed "Tessera". Mykotronx claims to have already shipped 10,000 Capstone and 20,000 Clipper chipsets. Does anyone know anything else about PMSP? Mark R. mrr@ripem.msu.edu --