[Cryptography] NSA versus DES etc....

Natanael natanael.l at gmail.com
Thu Oct 2 14:50:15 EDT 2014


Den 2 okt 2014 20:42 skrev "John Gilmore" <gnu at toad.com>:

> So what's the real reason?  "It just isn't done"?  Come on, these
> guys do every other *&$(#)! thing they aren't supposed to do -- why
> not this one?

One plausible explanation is that their custom crypto is so mundane that
nobody cares. Could be custom Rijndael variants tweaked for extremely
specific use cases. Could be algorithms designed for hardware primarily,
with overhead (due to tempest resistance) most people won't accept.

Another is that every one of them have been leaked, but without strong
evidence or any convincing reason for experienced cryptographers to take a
close look, nobody noticed. You might be able to find NSA's algorithms
openly on Russian forums, but without knowing where they come from or what
they do, or if there's anything special about them in the first place.
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