Is the NSA really competent?

[Perry E. Metzger]

catalyst-remailer at netcom.com says:

> There is no evidence that the NSA knows about _any_ fundamental
> technique that has not been published in the literature.

Thats naive. They knew about differential cryptanalysis, and likely
linear and related key attacks, twenty years before the open
literature did. The notion that there is nothing else that they have
up their sleeves doesn't ring true.

The NSA has a large budget, and lots of extremely smart people.

  Nor is there any evidence (save the hearsay about S-boxes, which
> were actually developed at IBM) that they have made any major
> contribution to the science of cryptography, despite the massive
> resources they throw into it.

Ahem. It is painfully obvious from the few bits and pieces of
information we glean to this day from repeated study of DES that they
know far, far more than we do about how to attack conventional
ciphers. It is unlikely that they haven't applied any of their skill
to public key techniques. There is no evidence that NSA cryptographers
aren't at least as smart as the ones out in the field, and they have a
tremendous head start and lots of practical experience that none of us
have.


Perry