Exporing Military encryption to China

[Declan McCullagh]

Ah, this seems to be the IP encryptor of choice:
https://infosec.navy.mil/PRODUCTS/CRYPTO/KIV-21.html

-Declan


On Fri, Aug 31, 2001 at 09:41:56AM -0000, Dr. Evil wrote:
> Does anyone know why this KIV-7 thing is so super-seekrit, or why the
> Chinese would want it so badly that they paid to smuggle them?  It is
> made by Mykotronx, the same guys who made the Clipper chips.  From
> what I could find about it, it just sounds like a super-secure VPN box
> that can basically encrypt T1s and satellite links.  It is
> TEMPEST-spec.  I couldn't find out exactly what kind of encryption alg
> it uses, but is it likely to be any better than AES?  It does have
> some great features, like removable keys, and it probably has some
> amount of tamper-resistance, but it's still not doing anything more
> than VPNing, but at a telco layer, not an IP layer.  Surely the
> Chinese could have gotten the same functionality with a couple of
> OpenBSD boxes with ipsec?  Maybe it wouldn't be as nice of a package,
> but it would be a lot cheaper.  Or maybe they were hoping to find some
> backdoor in it?  Seems unlikely that there is one in this product.
> 
> Hey, for a good time, you can go to the KIV-7 conference at the Golden
> Nugget hotel, January 15-17.  Maybe I'll see you there.
> 
> In these cases, I always wonder, "what's the real story?"