Re: What's anyone know about Teledyne Electronic Technologies?

[lmccarth@cs.umass.edu]

Mark Aldrich writes:
> Teledyne (TET) is out marketing a "new" crypto system as a competitor 
> against DES and what TET calls "linear" cryptosystems. They are claiming 
> a non-linear approach in which (as best I can tell) they are permuting 
> the s-boxes and using 4 bit/16 entry substitution tables.
>
> They are also asserting that these "key generated substitution tables and 
> inter-round permutations" are supported by "nonlinear orthomorphic 
> mappings generated from arbitrary key" (and that this is patented) and 
> "row-complete Latin Squares generated from an arbitrary key" (and that 
> this is also patented).

Lothrop Mittenthal, who is Senior Cryptologist at TET, gave a sparsely-
attended talk about some or all of this stuff at the RSA conference in
January. The title was "Statistically Efficient Inter-round Mixing in Block
Substitution Devices". I came in late and was ill-prepared to evaluate much
of what he was presenting, so I can't offer any useful technical opinion.

Copies of his transparencies are in the RSADSC proceedings, so you might try
to borrow someone's copy, or I suppose someone could scan `em and mail you
a copy. He didn't give an email address AFAIK, but according to the
proceedings his phone is (in the PST zone) (805) 498-3621 ext. 5005

Lots of cypherpunks were wandering around there, so maybe someone else heard
the whole seminar and can comment. (CME ?)

-Lewis		"You've got no secrets to conceal. How does it feel ?" (Dylan)