Confessions of a skeptical mind (re: reports that 17-year-old "cracked" al Qaeda "encryption").

[Roy M.Silvernail]

On Sunday 18 May 2003 12:20 am, Jay D. Dyson wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> 	I found this article and I must admit that my usually robust
> skepticism is now in overdrive.  First off, this is the first (and only)
> report I've seen on the subject.  Second, I know of several top minds (not
> the least of which is Niels Provos) who have sought to verify claims of al
> Qaeda-sired use of cryptography and steganography...and all reports thus
> far have indicated that there's no evidence to support any such claims.
>
> 	With that in mind, I'm seeking any substantiation or refutation of
> this article's claims.  I'm including both the URL and the full text of
> the article for review.

The research of Provos and others proves, if nothing else, that nothing 
resembling well-known crypto is stegged.  So either an unknown system was 
used, or the stegged data has been stripped of its identifying header 
information. (there was a program to do this with PGP a while back)  Probably 
at least the latter, because any header information included wouldn't look 
random, and stego relies on the hidden data to look random.  Any credible 
crypto algorithm's output is going to look pretty random.  Also, Fardia is 
quoted as saying the data were triple-encrypted.  

So we have someone claiming that, given an arbitrary sample of 
random-appearing data, he was able to not only recognize the output of an 
arbitrary crypto algorithm which may or may not be well known, but he was 
able to similarly recognize and correlate the subsequent output so to infer 
the repeated encryption.  All for an unnamed "US agency" (perhaps the 
(NS|CI)A?) which, presumably, was unable to do more than divine the presence 
of an encrypted message in this data.  And this smoking gun, which would go a 
long way towards legitimizing the U.S. 's demonization of Al-Qaeda, is only 
reported in the Hindustan Times.

Would someone please open the airlock?  I believe Ford and Arthur are waiting 
outside.

> http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_255766,0008.htm

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