Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!brl-adm!umd5!mimsy!aplcen!osiris!mjr From: mjr@osiris.UUCP (Marcus J. Ranum) Newsgroups: sci.crypt Subject: Re: An interesting message from SECURITY-DIGEST@RUTGERS Message-ID: <1409@osiris.UUCP> Date: Sun, 11-Oct-87 13:19:31 EDT Article-I.D.: osiris.1409 Posted: Sun Oct 11 13:19:31 1987 Date-Received: Tue, 13-Oct-87 04:48:37 EDT References: <7449@reed.UUCP-> Organization: My Etch-A-Sketch runs X-Windows Lines: 23 Keywords: NSA, DES, STU-III Summary: whatever happened to this thing "freedom" ? In article <7449@reed.UUCP->, mdr@reed.UUCP (Mike Rutenberg) writes: -> -------------- Start of forwarded message -> From: "GLENN EVERHART, 609 486 6328" -> -> -> 1. DES was originally certified, but was designed with a short enough -> key that NSA could break it by brute force. (It IS a federal law that -> no cipher may be used for international traffic that NSA can't break, -> so the permeability of DES follows from reading the relevant US Code -> sections.) The classified algorithms are said to differ from DES mainly -> in the length of their keys. Another friend of mine says that apparently if the NSA finds you're using a cypher system they can't break (for anything important) they'll impound it ?!?!? Is this the case ? What does the REAL content of the paragraph above mean. I don't think I like this... --mjr(); -- If they think you're crude, go technical; if they think you're technical, go crude. I'm a very technical boy. So I get as crude as possible. These days, though, you have to be pretty technical before you can even aspire to crudeness... -Johnny Mnemonic