Venona

[Steven Bellovin]

I'm currently reading "Defend the Realm", an authorized history oF MI-5 by a historian who had access to their secret files.  The chapter on Venona has the following fascinating footnote: "The method of decryption is summarized in a number of NSA publications, among them the account by Cecil James Phillips of NSA, 'What Made Venona Possible?'  References to this account does not imply that it is corroborated by HMG or any British intelligence agency."

I've always been a bit skeptical of NSA's story of how the system was broken, which makes me wonder if there's some other reason for that disclaimer...  (Grumpy aside: I have the full text of the ebook (borrowed from the NY Public Library) on my laptop.  However, I couldn't copy and paste the quotation, even though it's obviously fair use -- the DRM software wouldn't let me...)

		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb





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