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64 lines
2.8 KiB
Plaintext
64 lines
2.8 KiB
Plaintext
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From: c3q@vax5.cit.cornell.edu
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Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk
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Subject: the NSA KNOWS...
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Date: 6 Dec 91 15:54:13 GMT
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Organization: Cornell University
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I've been doing some research on data encryption lately, and was led inevitably
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to the Data Encryption Standard (DES). As originally proposed in the '70's (I
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think) the DES had a 128 bit key, and 8 code boxes. The NSA did IBM (the
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originators of the algorithm) a favor by rewriting the code boxes to make them
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"better" (slight cynicism on my part) and then said "might as well reduce the
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key to 64 bits, now that the boxes are so strong". Researchers at Stanford
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have noted mysterious patterns within the code boxes that might be a
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mathematical back-door into breaking the code. In the DES standard there is
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also the proviso that highly classified military, etc. data may/should be
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classified in some other way.
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Point 2: In a study of the NSA it was revealed that the NSA owns land next to
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every major microwave relay route and down-link inside the US. With the
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scattering inherent in micro-links, this gives them access to 90+% of all data
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traffic.
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Point 3: The NSA measures its computing power in acres (no joke). They are the
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leading purchaser of latest generation Crays.
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Conclusion: The NSA can and does read our mail, encrypted or not.
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Caveat: There is so much data flow, that even with filters that pull out only
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those messages encluding certain key words, any human operators would still be
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incapable of reading any realistic proportion of our mail. Just hope that
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expert systems designed for mail reading aren't developed soon (or haven't been
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developed).
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Books to read: The Digital Encryption Standard
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Cipher Systems
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Inside the Puzzle Palace
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Just thought I'd bring home some of the cyberpunk aspects of the world we
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currently live in.
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Travis J.I. Corcoran
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Cornell '92/'92 (??)
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Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk
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From: ebrandt@jarthur.claremont.edu (Eli Brandt)
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Subject: Re: the NSA KNOWS...
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Organization: Cult of Loud Loud Sibelius
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Date: Sat, 7 Dec 1991 08:41:46 GMT
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In article <164CCD625.M14661@mwvm.mitre.org> M14661@mwvm.mitre.org writes:
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>Good points, but does anyone know how the RSA public key algorithm is
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>holding up? It's slow, but fine for precoding email messages, at least
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It seems to be secure as long as you pick big enough primes -- remembering
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that the NSA has CPU we can only dream of. I strongly suspect that the NSA
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can crack DES. If they can break RSA with considered-secure primes, it
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almost certainly takes them much compute, and they would not be expending
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this kind of effort on *our* messages. I believe PGP, a PC RSA
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implementation, is still available from garbo.uwasa.fi; US users are kindly
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requested to refrain from downloading except for research purposes. It
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uses math owned by PKP, you see.
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Eli ebrandt@jarthur.claremont.edu
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