Liberating Clipper Stuff from Mykotronx Dumpsters

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

At 4:24 AM 8/3/96, Bill Stewart wrote:
>At 09:20 AM 8/1/96 -0800, jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com> reminded us:
>>Also:  Clipper was fabbed by VLSI Technology.  A few pointed inquiries might
>>work wonders here.
>
>It was made by Mykotronx, using tamperproof programmable gate
>array chips from VLSI, though I don't remember whether they were
>entirely programmed at Mykotronx+NSA, or whether they were
>mostly mask-programmed at VLSI first.

By the way, newcomers to the list (I'm not referring to Bill, of course)
may not know some of the background on this Mykotronx story. An interesting
use of remailers, too.

One of the early list subscribers went "Dumpster-diving" outside the
Torrance, CA headquarters of Mykotronx, a previously little-known defense
subcontractor.

Amongst the stuff in the Dumpster, unshredded, he found:

- payroll information

- copies of contracts with VLSI Technology, the NSA, AT&T, etc., showing
the work to have started back in the early 90s

- yield information on the chips, and some limited test information

- copies of various memoranda between AT&T, the NSA, the FBI, Mykotronx,
Sandia, and VLSI Technology

- a bunch of other goodies

He scanned or typed this stuff he found into a text file and sent it to one
of the earliest members of the Cypherpunks list, asking for it to be passed
on to someone who could do something with it. A few hours later, via
anonymous remailer posting, it went out to the several hundred subscribers
to the Cypherpunks list at that time. (It's somewhere in the archives, such
as they are. This would be around late April, 1993, possibly May-June.)

I later heard that Mykotronx was mightily embarrassed to have this kind of
stuff found in Dumpsters out where anyone could find it, and that "the
authorities" ordered a tightening up of security.

--Tim May

Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software!
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed.
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
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