Militarily Critical Technologies

[John Young <jya@pipeline.com>]

The Militarily Critical Technologies List (MCTL) tersely
describes the full range of technologies controlled by the 
ITAR, EAR and Regimes like the Wassenaar Arrangment.
Information systems and cryptography are covered in
Section 8 of the MCTL which we've put with the TOC at:

     http://jya.com/mctl08.htm

It provides an informative chart that compares information
systems capabilities for 27 nations, and the leaders in a
few cases are surprising. 

The document summarizes crypto:

  1. Cryptanalytic Technologies (for breaking
  ciphertext): 

  Critical Parameters: Due to the numerous variables
  required to implement an information security scheme
  and the wide range of products and services in which
  information security can be deployed this technology
  does not lend itself to specifically enumerated
  parameters.

  Critical Materials: None identified.

  Unique Equipment: Computers of 10,000 CTP, or greater,
  and software specially designed to test the ability of
  cryptanalytic systems to perform key searches,
  statistical, linear and differential cryptanalyses; and
  factor 110 decimal digit, or larger, numbers.

  Unique Software: Operating systems and applications for
  massively parallel cryptanalytic processors (> 16
  processors) specially designed to perform statistical,
  linear and differential cryptanalyses, exhaustive key
  searches and quadratic and number field sieve
  factoring.

  Control Regimes: WA ML 11, 21; WA IL Cat 5.

  2. Cryptographic Technologies (for keeping data
  secure):

  Critical Parameters: Due to the numerous variables
  required to implement an information security scheme
  and the wide range of products and services in which
  information security can be deployed this technology
  does not lend itself to specifically enumerated
  parameters.

  Critical Materials: None identified.

  Unique Equipment: Computers of 10,000 CTP, or greater,
  and software specially designed to perform Randomness,
  Correlation, Weak Key and Symmetry Under
  Complementation tests to evaluate the strength of new
  USG encryption algorithms during development.

  Unique Software: The software providing the
  cryptographic functionality must be specially designed
  and integrated into each application. The system
  engineering and integration, user system interface,
  algorithms and key generators must have zero defects.

  Control Regimes: WA ML 11, 21; WA IL Cat 5.

The document states, "A high rate of IS knowledge transfer
from the US to foreign competitors occurs through open
source US trade journals, technical literature, various
international fora, the Internet and intelligence. As a
result, the US technology leadership in communications and
computer systems has declined in recent years relative to
Europe and Japan."

Section 9 covers Information Warfare Technology and will
interest those who wonder what technologies may be more
effective than cryptography for information security, as
the NRC Crypto Report suggested. We've put this section
(in its original PDF format) at:

  http://jya.com/mcsec09.pdf (122K)