From: c3q@vax5.cit.cornell.edu
Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk
Subject: the NSA KNOWS...
Date: 6 Dec 91 15:54:13 GMT
Organization: Cornell University

I've been doing some research on data encryption lately, and was led inevitably
to the Data Encryption Standard (DES).  As originally proposed in the '70's (I
think) the DES had a 128 bit key, and 8 code boxes.  The NSA did IBM (the
originators of the algorithm) a favor by rewriting the code boxes to make them
"better" (slight cynicism on my part) and then said "might as well reduce the
key to 64 bits, now that the boxes are so strong".  Researchers at Stanford
have noted mysterious patterns within the code boxes that might be a
mathematical back-door into breaking the code.  In the DES standard there is
also the proviso that highly classified military, etc. data may/should be
classified in some other way.

Point 2: In a study of the NSA it was revealed that the NSA owns land next to
every major microwave relay route and down-link inside the US.  With the
scattering inherent in micro-links, this gives them access to 90+% of all data
traffic.  

Point 3: The NSA measures its computing power in acres (no joke).  They are the
leading purchaser of latest generation Crays.

Conclusion: The NSA can and does read our mail, encrypted or not.

Caveat: There is so much data flow, that even with filters that pull out only
those messages encluding certain key words, any human operators would still be
incapable of reading any realistic proportion of our mail.  Just hope that
expert systems designed for mail reading aren't developed soon (or haven't been
developed).

Books to read:	The Digital Encryption Standard
		Cipher Systems
		Inside the Puzzle Palace

Just thought I'd bring home some of the cyberpunk aspects of the world we
currently live in.

Travis J.I. Corcoran
Cornell '92/'92 (??)
Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk
From: ebrandt@jarthur.claremont.edu (Eli Brandt)
Subject: Re: the NSA KNOWS...
Organization: Cult of Loud Loud Sibelius
Date: Sat, 7 Dec 1991 08:41:46 GMT

In article <164CCD625.M14661@mwvm.mitre.org> M14661@mwvm.mitre.org writes:

>Good points, but does anyone know how the RSA public key algorithm is
>holding up?  It's slow, but fine for precoding email messages, at least

It seems to be secure as long as you pick big enough primes -- remembering
that the NSA has CPU we can only dream of.  I strongly suspect that the NSA
can crack DES.  If they can break RSA with considered-secure primes, it
almost certainly takes them much compute, and they would not be expending
this kind of effort on *our* messages.  I believe PGP, a PC RSA
implementation, is still available from garbo.uwasa.fi; US users are kindly
requested to refrain from downloading except for research purposes.  It
uses math owned by PKP, you see.

   Eli   ebrandt@jarthur.claremont.edu