Crypto in Baghdad--Jaguar and Saddam's Bunker

[Steve Schear]

At 12:05 PM 4/9/2003 -0700, you wrote:
>The AG Crypto story has been repeated way too often to
>be relied upon as a guide. Best to treat these myths as
>yokel bait.

Perhaps, but I worked at Cylink, a AG Crypto competitor, during those years 
and my second-hand information (I wasn't the product manager of any of 
these boxes) was that NSA did approach us to compromise certain boxes to be 
supplied to narco terrorists, etc. independent sales agent to Cylink (I 
think operating out of Miami).  The compromises, from what I understand, 
were to made to the random number generator.  As some on the list 
understand, with subsequent whitening compromised random number generators 
can be very difficult to directly detect even by experts.  Other methods, 
such as intentional leaks which are a part of every good 
counter-surveillance operation, would need to be used to out bogus boxes.

steve


we do not win the terrorism battle / with
exclusion of liberties / an un-elected president / with a brand new
atrocity / make way for war time opportunists / corporate interests and
their proxies / exploitation of a tragedy / to serve their ideologies /
corporate military complex / continues to abuse the world / death weapons
for despots / sold by the red, white and blue
-- Moral Crux, Stocks and Bombs