NSA's new mode of operation broken in less than 24 hours (fwd)

[Jim Choate]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2001 22:40:32 -0300
From: "Paulo S. L. M. Barreto" <paulo.barreto at terra.com.br>
To: coderpunks at toad.com
Subject: NSA's new mode of operation broken in less than 24 hours

NSA has recently convinced NIST to include a new algorithm - something they
dubbed "Double Counter" mode after 18 months of development - for
consideration as a possible standard mode of operation for the AES. It's
described at <http://csrc.nist.gov/encryption/modes/proposedmodes/>, but I
wouldn't bother reading it now had I not done it already. The new mode seems
to have been reduced to bits by Phillip Rogaway, David Wagner and others.

Could it be that the NSA is losing its proverbial cryptologic skills? For
one can't help but conclude that, if they acted in good faith to provide a
useful mode, then they did a very poor job, and if they acted otherwise,
then they quite underestimate current public knowledge in the area.

Paulo Barreto.



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