Russia Intercepts US Military Communications?

reusch reusch at comcast.net
Mon Mar 31 14:10:20 EST 2003


At 12:51 PM 3/31/03 -0500, Adam Shostack wrote:
>On Sun, Mar 30, 2003 at 07:38:29PM -0500, reusch wrote:
>| Via the Cryptome, http://www.cryptome.org/, "RU sure", look
>| at http://www.aeronautics.ru/news/news002/news082.htm.
>| 
>| I'm amazed at their claims of radio interception. One would 
>| expect that all US military communications, even trivial ones, 
>| are strongly encrypted, given the ease of doing this. Someone, 
>| more well informed, please reassure me that this is the case.
>
>The ease of doing what?   Applying DES with a known key?  Key
>management is hard.  Doing key lookups, cert chain management, etc, to
>NSA level stadards is expensive.  Etc.
>
>The non-availability of good, cheap, easy to use crypto in a COTS
>package is the legacy of the ITAR and EAR.  That there is a lack of
>deployed crypto in the US military should be unsuprising.
>
>Adam
>
>
>-- 
>"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
>					               -Hume

Nosing around on the same site, one finds 
"How military radio communications are intercepted"
http://www.aeronautics.ru/news/news002/news071.htm

Searching for SINCGARS indicates that all US military radios have
encryption capabilities, which can be turned off.  Several, in use,
key distribution systems are mentioned.  Perhaps these systems or even
encryption, with infrequently changed keys are, as you suggest, too
inconvenient to use under the conditions.  -MFR

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