Re: Encryption Chips

[tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)]

At 4:47 PM 2/25/96, "A. Padgett Peterson P.E. Information Security"

>The nice thing about am implimentation in software is that the code can be
>examined for just this sort of thing *on a randomly selected operating unit*.
>- hard to do with a chip.

But of course one's compiler may have been subverted, as Ken Thompson
showed some years back. Software implementations are sensitive to different
sorts of attacks than hardware implementations are.

Me. I don't have any hardware crypto chips at all, and think it unlikely I
will in the next several years. So I use only software crypto
implementations. And I admit to not having verified that my copy of MacPGP
is the same one now at the various sites...I figure that if the NSA has
pulled a blag bag job on me and replaced my MacPGP with a special version
that I've got other problems to worry about!

Your mileage may vary. If I were responsible for crypto for large financial
transactions, I'd have a different set of worries.

--Tim May

Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software!
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed.
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Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
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