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FWD: International Encryption Protocols
To: "Frank O'Dwyer" <[email protected]>
cc: [email protected] (Firewalls Mailing List)
From: Justin Mason <[email protected]>
Subject: BoS: Re: International
Encryption Protocols
Frank O'Dwyer sez:
>After all, if the CoCom countries _weren't_ willing to sell each other
>crypto equipment, how could they spy on one another? :-)
>
>(Actually the :-) may not be necessary - I believe there was a story
> in the news recently about the UK 'authorities' snooping on Irish
> official traffic carried on UK-supplied equipment.)
Almost right -- it was the UK surveillance service (GCHQ) snooping on
Irish official traffic carried on US-supplied crypto equipment.
Apparently, the equipment in question had a "back door", courtesy of
the NSA; when GCHQ found out that the Irish govt were using this
equipment, they had only to ask their NSA pals for the details.
I only heard the details myself via a popular-science program on crypto
;), so the so-called back door may not have been a deliberately
weakened algorithm, it may have been a set of keys from an key-escrow
repository or some such.
--j.
Weld Pond - [email protected] - http://www.l0pht.com/~weld
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