CDR: RE: Re: why should it be trusted?

[Tim May]

At 10:22 AM -0700 10/17/00, Kerry L. Bonin wrote:
>At 10:06 AM 10/17/00 -0500, Fisher Mark wrote:
>>It is just a whole lot easier to do a black-bag job on a North Korean
>>embassy (for example) than to directly attack their crypto.  That is why
>>defense companies do background checks, that is why some areas of military
>>facilities are guarded by soldiers with guns, and that is why the NSA tried
>>to conceal all evidence of their existence for a while.  Crypto is just one
>>part of a unified security policy -- sometimes not a very important part at
>>that.
>
>I don't dispute this, my choice of words was "Sure, they devote significant
>resources to exploiting weaknesses in key management."  "Rubber hose" and
>"black bag" cryptanalysis have a long history of being far more cost
>effective than brute force.

Your main claim was that ciphers are crackable by the NSA (pace your 
various comments about "near realtime," "cracking farms," ASICs and 
silicon-on-sapphire, and your .mil/spook buddies who have 
confidentially told you so).

Are you retracting this claim now?


--Tim May
-- 
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES:   831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
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