What ever happened to... Cray Comp/NSA co-development

[anon-remailer@utopia.hacktic.nl (Anonymous)]

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O.K. I'm new... however...

I remember reading an article about this news release in mid '94
(I believe it was the NY Times), about the time that Cray
Computer Company (Seymour's unsuccessful spinoff company) was
actively seeking bank financing. Anyone remember?

The article was about an NSA contract award to Cray Computer. In
some background:

The Supercomputer industry had been struggling for a while with
reductions in purchases from the U.S. government due to cutbacks
on research spending and the 'end of the cold war'. The situation 
at MasPar had gotten to the point of court reorginization or
worse. In June (of '94) Cray was in such a cash squeeze that it
took out a $17.5 million secured loan to fend collapse. During
July, Cray announced that it was seeking a "partner" to make an
investment in exchange for technology access. Guess who shows up
with plans to build "the ultimate spying machine"? Now, Seymour's 
a nice guy, but money is tight, so he buys in on the hopes for
more a lucrative future relationship. The plot thickens.

The contract calls for Cray to put up $4.6 million to cover the
initial development (didn't they just take out a loan?) of which
about $400,000 will go to the NSA for so called "software
consulting services". It makes one wonder what the "real"
contract was worth (such as producing this surveillance system
in quantity)? There was some speculation in the article about
what this system could be used for, such as DEA operations
outside U.S. borders (Columbia perhaps) or foreign military
communication or enhancement processing of spy satellite photos.

What caught my attention was the architecture.

A "hybrid design linking two supercomputer processors with an
array of HALF A MILLION inexpensive processors" that were
designed by the U.S. government laboratory affiliated with the
NSA. The same chip house that brought us Clipper.

I've not kept up with the "ultimate" demise that eventually
befell Cray Computer Company, but the October 16 FBI filing
on capacity for Digital Telephony got me thinking back to this
article. 1% seems like a rather huge need for horsepower. And
what if GAK doesn't fly? And the widespread use of hard crypto
just keeps increasing?

This kind of machine could, in theory:

1) Implement ALL Clipper(II) based Key Escrow functionality in
   silicon (the easy part) AND allow for simultaneous decrypt and
   surveil of 'who knows how many' Clipper based data streams.

2) Implement general RSA based Prime Factoring functionality in
   silicon (the not so easy part) AND allow massively parallel
   decrypt and surveil of 'who knows how many' RSA/etc. based
   data streams.

3) Implement it all, AND 'on-line' transaction based surveillance
   via the FBI's 1% capacity infrastructure.

Chilling... Who needs key escrow (or RSA private keys) when
you've got a massively parallel prime factoring machine. What if
GAK was to become a 'non-issue'? How fast do you think a machine
such as this could factor RSA 129?

Makes you wonder if 2048 bits will be enough (my guess.. it
won't). But then, I'm sure that when Cray Computer finally folded
(has/hasn't?) all that tech just got sold for scrap eh?

Anitro



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