Black eyes heal

[baum@newton.apple.com (Allen J. Baum)]

Its important to realize what was really gained by this revelation-
  - some PR value
  - several months before fixed Clipper/Tessara chips become available

I have no doubts that the problem that was revealed will be corrected.
I'm not sure it was a good idea to reveal the weakness. Imagine how much
worse it would be (in terms of PR) if lots of phones had been deployed
before the flaw was found? On the other hand, it's possible the weakness
was known and would have been (is being) corrected quietly.

So, there is a small window in which to take advantage of the PR, and the
delay in revised chip availablility. Unless there are some major defections
in Congressional support because of this, I don't think much will change;
Clipper will become a reality.

A competing product could devastate it- yes, government subsidies &
requirements might form the nucleus of support, but having to deal with NSA
restrictions and sole sourcing of the chip makes it a real, expensive pain
to turn it into a product. I don't think the revision will be completely
trivial, either. The way these chips are built means a much more extensive
verification process must be used- not just reburning a PROM.

A standard micro and a standard encryption chip on the side (don't have the
references here, but at HotChips there will be a paper on a 100kbit/sec
Single Chip Modular Exponentiation Processor from Holger Orup of Aarhus
Univ. Denmark) could make a viable, competing product.

Note that I'm not volunteering or suggesting that one of you should go out
and implement my great idea- just making predictions.

**************************************************
* Allen J. Baum              tel. (408)974-3385  *
* Apple Computer, MS/305-3B                      *
* 1 Infinite Loop                                *
* Cupertino, CA 95014        baum@apple.com      *
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