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From: /a/paul@proper.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.crypt
Subject: Re: What is it really like?
Message-ID: <246@proper.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 22-May-86 14:34:32 EDT
Article-I.D.: proper.246
Posted: Thu May 22 14:34:32 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 25-May-86 11:29:10 EDT
References: <3264@reed.UUCP> <6650@utzoo.UUCP> <507@ucsfcca.UUCP> <6682@utzoo.UUCP>
Reply-To: paul@proper.UUCP (Paul E. Hoffman)
Organization: Proper UNIX, Oakland CA
Lines: 14

This brings up an interesting point about cryptography in the real world: if
you want to mess up an adversary, making their cryptographic system hard to
use may be almost as good as breaking their codes. I imagine that the NSA has
a good handle on this concept. In the method discussed in this thread (CD-ROM
readers with one-time pads), if someone wanted to mess up our system, they
could determine some way of making an established cryptosystem unreliable or
hard to use. The likely result would be that many communications that use
that system would switch to another system, causing confusion and fragmentation.It could also cause some administrator to decide to start sending certain
classes of communications without encryption.

So, to start a new subject, which current systems are most vulnerable to
frobbing? This could be done with jamming, spoofing, or overloading, and
I'm sure that there are many other ways I haven't thought of. Does this sort
of action compromise US security more than USSR security?