Re: 'Black' budget purchases

[paul@poboy.b17c.ingr.com (Paul Robichaux)]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Michael Wilson writes about the NSA's wafer fab facility, which I
think Tim has addressed in some detail. He then goes on to say:

> Additionally, having such information is useful beyond its
> application towards analysis.  Operationally, it is useful for an
> adversary to know, for instance, that photo recon analysis is
> performed on NeXT workstations.  This knowledge provides
> specifications on just what can achieved in the way of image
> enhancements, etc.  It also opens up a realm of options in
> informational warfare; knowledge of the target platform is critical
> toward building a tailored attack mechanism to cripple their
> capability, while knowledge of their providers supplies an adversary
> with the introduction mechanism (there is no such thing as an isolated
> system).

I don't agree. If you know that NRO, for example, is using
Intergraph's Interact photogrammetry workstations (disclaimer: I don't
know if they are or not) that will indeed tell you give you a floor
value for the capability of their analyses, but only because the
Interact is an off-the-shelf unit. Add in custom software- as the NSA
is certain to have done- and your floor value is only that. In the
case of photointerp, I suggest that knowing how many pixels a NeXT box
can display is not particularly useful in building an attack strategy.

In general, I don't think that knowledge of hardware capabilities is
too valuable. We had a similar discussion w.r.t. key lengths recently;
I think the consensus was that knowing how many large supercomputers
NSA had didn't mean that you could accurately estimate their factoring
abilities, since it is likely that any advances they've made would be
concealed. Again, you end up with the floor value.

- -Paul

- -- 
Paul Robichaux, KD4JZG      | Why did an NSA agent threaten to kill Jim Bidzos?
perobich@ingr.com           | Of course I don't speak for Intergraph.
	       

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: 2.6

iQCVAgUBLhmD7afb4pLe9tolAQFMXwP/cE5li0JDgFJO6KwLbg1V7Dk/5SDHvpQS
/8MdIRXikz6fvQOnauZKeUM2oRNVhOCXy3WHWHNhJsbz42rJaU/oWyFfjed4cIMM
b5ChyACMhlxtZYiVoUD853VLf0KknecfPxeyoQBMtxV0hePmfPfyzvuHVK4FVE7i
7vVIYlP5ixc=
=p5Wp
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----