Re: Any truth to rumor that NSA had Public Key Crypto first?

From: Bill Unruh (unruh_at_string.physics.ubc.ca)
Date: 09/28/04 

Date: 28 Sep 2004 18:18:12 GMT

George Ou <533george_ou234@netzero234.com> writes:

]Here is an interesting story by Bruce Schneier on ZDNet.
]http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-5384208.html

]According to Bruce, the NSA may have been 20 years ahead of the
]academic community in 1970. Is it possible that the rumors that the
]NSA already had Public Key Cryptography well before Diffie Hellman or
]even the British spooks are true? Given the apparent superiority of
]the NSA back in those days, it would seem possible.

Of course it is possible. The UK discovery was made in a day or so, while
it took RSA, Diffie Hellman, etc years. But possible does not mean true.
You need evidence to decide if it is true or not. It is possible that NSA
is inhabited by a secret race of hyperintelligent being bred, like Huxley's
alphas in a secret lab. I just would not give it a very high probablility.

]From what Bruce says about DES, it sounded like the NSA just wanted to
]see what the public could come up with. Then IBM submits something

No, that is not what he says. He says that NIST asked for a public
encryption standard. NSA probably did not want to give them a private one
precisely because they did not want to reveal their state. They weakened
DES by making the key short, and strengthened it with the Sbox design.
Basically this meant only they had a chance of breaking it. (good Sbox so
only exhaustive search works, short key so that they but not others could
actually carry out exhaustive search.)

The NSA mathematicians are ordinary people, no different from the ones that
inhabit University Math departments. They work in a highly secret
environment with huge bureacracies and secrecy standards which severely
inhibit the free exchange of ideas, information etc. They have spent a lot
of time on the subject and have a large amount of accumulated expertise.
It would not surprise me at all if the outside community were ahead of NSA
now in a number of areas.

]that was elementary to them, and they just decided to be generous and
]throw in a minor improvement and give it back to the community in the
]form of the current DES. Now it seems like the SHA-1 vulnerabilities
]are beginning to shadow the NSA a little too close for comfort.

]George Ou

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