NSA breaks Russian PRNGs with neural networks??

[rishab@dxm.ernet.in]

tcmay@netcom.com:
> An interesting article by Seymour Hersh is cited below. It says that
> NSA had transcripts of the 1991 coup plotters (and presumably other
> Russian leaders) and that Bush passed these on to Yeltsin to warn him.

A recent article from the Daily Telegraph, another British paper, went on about
the possible encryption techniques used by the Russians. It described how 
reused one-time pads led to the unmasking of Fuchs, the Rosenbergs, Philby 
et al. Then it suggested that the method the NSA broke was based on (presumably
weak) PRNGs, a stream cipher. It suggested that the NSA might have developed 
techniques to find patterns in PRNG outputs through neural networks, or genetic
algorithms!!

While the latter sounds like crap to me, even though I've worked with and 
believe in the power of neural networks for amazing pattern recognition, unless
the PRNGs were _really_ weak, I'm skeptical. I don't think the Russians are 
fools, and in these times one doesn't rely on secret weak algorithms for 
crypto, not when there are publicly well known strong ones. Humint? Maybe.

The Atlantic Monthly will carry a story on the NSA-Yeltsin thing in June. It
would be nice if someone posts it here.


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Rishab Aiyer Ghosh                                     rishab@dxm.ernet.in
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