On Wed, Dec 11, 2013 at 06:28:31PM -0800, Steve Weis wrote:
On Wed, Dec 11, 2013 at 6:00 PM, coderman <coderman@gmail.com> wrote:
unredacted: https://peertech.org/dist/nsa-cpp-goals-FY2013-unredact.png
"Intel Ivy Bridge"
Is this a guess because "Intel Ivy Bridge" fits into the redacted space or is there some other evidence?
I believe it's just a guess based on fit.
Ivy Bridge processors are general purpose x86 CPUs. It doesn't make sense to me to refer to it as an "encryption chip" for "web encryption devices". Do you know of products using IVB processors for SSL offloading or in VPN appliances?
Suppose I'm the manager writing this document, reporting the expected accomplishments of my group. We do cryptanalysis. If we're projecting success against FooBarCo chips' encryption sub-core, and everybody knows FooBarCo chips are used in both encryption and non-encryption products, it makes sense to cite the specific applications where FooBarCo chips are used. So "for FooBarCo chips used in VPN and SSL" makes sense, even if FooBarCo chips are not *solely* VPN and SSL. However, in "for FooBarCo encryption chips used in VPN", the "encryption" seems to me to denote a special purpose chip, rather than a general purpose chip with an encryption sub-core. I've seen worse manglings of language in similar documents, though, so I would not put it past said middle manager to write "for Intel Ivy Bridge encryption chips used in VPN and SSL", even though that's a bit of word salad to anyone who knows the technology.
To me, the redacted document sounds like it's referring to a security processor used for SSL offloading. For example, something like a Cavium Nitrox (which I'm not implying is the subject of the document).
"Cavium Networks" or "Cavium Nitrox" are approximately the right length to fit. Other vendors that might be interesting include F5, Barracuda, Riverbed, Cisco SCA 11000, Radware (an Israeli/American company), and everybody listed on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SSL_Acceleration The document looks like Word and appears to be fully justified; anyone with that software want to match the fonts and try out various substitutions to see what fits best? Note that http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/784159/sigintenabling-clean-1.pdf seems to have been digitally processed and redacted; the font baselines are perfectly aligned, to the sub-pixel antialiasing limit; while http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/784280/sigint-enabling-project.pdf appears to have gone out to paper and then been scanned in on a non-flatbed scanner; there is significant vertical slew across the line of text in question. Since the source document appears to be the same for both, an enterprising DTP jockey could use -clean-1.pdf to tune the document settings precisely, and then use -project.pdf to search for better unredaction matches. -andy