LEAF forgery

Perry E. Metzger perry at imsi.com
Fri Jun 3 05:23:41 PDT 1994



VACCINIA at uncvx1.oit.unc.edu says:
> It is indeed a great achievement to best the NSA at its own game. This hack 
> allows secure transmission and closes the LEAF backdoor. However, this only 
> strengthens my belief that they don't really need this LEAF access, can you 
> say trapdoor?

Your belief is without evidence. Its a supposition. I'd say that the
NSA has a lot to lose by putting holes in Skipjack.

None the less, I wouldn't use Skipjack, because I don't trust things I
don't know the design of. Unless people can widely examine Skipjack
I'd say it isn't trustworthy.

There also is, of course, a very slim chance that they were silly
enough to make Skipjack intentionally weak. However, that isn't a
major factor IMHO.

Perry






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