At 4:24 AM 8/3/96, Bill Stewart wrote:
At 09:20 AM 8/1/96 -0800, jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com> reminded us:
Also: Clipper was fabbed by VLSI Technology. A few pointed inquiries might work wonders here.
It was made by Mykotronx, using tamperproof programmable gate array chips from VLSI, though I don't remember whether they were entirely programmed at Mykotronx+NSA, or whether they were mostly mask-programmed at VLSI first.
By the way, newcomers to the list (I'm not referring to Bill, of course) may not know some of the background on this Mykotronx story. An interesting use of remailers, too. One of the early list subscribers went "Dumpster-diving" outside the Torrance, CA headquarters of Mykotronx, a previously little-known defense subcontractor. Amongst the stuff in the Dumpster, unshredded, he found: - payroll information - copies of contracts with VLSI Technology, the NSA, AT&T, etc., showing the work to have started back in the early 90s - yield information on the chips, and some limited test information - copies of various memoranda between AT&T, the NSA, the FBI, Mykotronx, Sandia, and VLSI Technology - a bunch of other goodies He scanned or typed this stuff he found into a text file and sent it to one of the earliest members of the Cypherpunks list, asking for it to be passed on to someone who could do something with it. A few hours later, via anonymous remailer posting, it went out to the several hundred subscribers to the Cypherpunks list at that time. (It's somewhere in the archives, such as they are. This would be around late April, 1993, possibly May-June.) I later heard that Mykotronx was mightily embarrassed to have this kind of stuff found in Dumpsters out where anyone could find it, and that "the authorities" ordered a tightening up of security. --Tim May Boycott "Big Brother Inside" 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, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."