Re: Stream Cipher Like SEAL Wanted ....

From: Paul Rubin (//phr.cx_at_NOSPAM.invalid)
Date: 06/22/03 

Date: 22 Jun 2003 12:55:24 -0700

"Andrew Swallow" <am.swallow@eatspam.btinternet.com> writes:
> We are talking about a military system, so the guards
> are armed. Using a grenade to blow it up is a very effective
> way of destroying a memory device. After destruction
> it cannot be read or used to decrypt messages.

There is a story in "Security Engineering" that NSA found through
experiments that blowing up an electronic device as well as they could
resulted in smithereens about 2mm in diameter. So they designed the
components of the "football" that holds the nuclear launch codes to
ensure that various parts of the secret key would be stored at least
2mm apart on the chip. That way, if the device got blown up, the
key couldn't be recovered from any individual fragment.

Quantcast