[Cryptography] NSA versus DES etc....

Michael Kjörling michael at kjorling.se
Mon Oct 6 08:30:54 EDT 2014


On 3 Oct 2014 15:14 +1000, from dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall):
> On Thu, 2 Oct 2014, Jerry Leichter wrote:
>> A friend (Martin Minow, in case anyone here remembers him) years ago 
>> told me a story he heard in Sweden.  The rivers and bays along the 
>> Swedish coast are extremely tricky to navigate, being full of underwater 
>> canyons and ridges.  For many years, the maps of some of the major ports 
>> were considered to be essential state secrets, a means of defense 
>> against (mainly Soviet) naval attack.  If you wanted to sail into one of 
>> these harbors, you had best get a Swedish pilot, who had access to the 
>> maps but would ban you from watching while he used them.
> 
> And didn't the Swedes find a Russian sub in their waters some years back?

While this has preciously little to do with cryptography, yes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_submarine_incidents#List_of_major_reported_incidents

and

https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ub%C3%A5tskr%C3%A4nkningar_i_Sverige#Rapporterade_incidenter

The Swedish Wikipedia article states that "between 1981 and 1994
approximately 4700 observations" of submarine-like objects were made,
presumably within Swedish territorial waters (I don't really feel like
digging out the Swedish government report cited as the source for
that).

It's interesting to note that the lists differ; the Swedish-language
list gives Sep 15 2011 as the date for what appears to be the same
event that is listed by the English-language list as occuring on Sep
11 2011. It's possible that further scrutiny would uncover further
differences.

U-137/S-363 [1] is probably the most famous incident, but as can
trivially be seen, far from the only one.

 [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_submarine_S-363

-- 
Michael Kjörling • https://michael.kjorling.semichael at kjorling.se
OpenPGP B501AC6429EF4514 https://michael.kjorling.se/public-keys/pgp
                 “People who think they know everything really annoy
                 those of us who know we don’t.” (Bjarne Stroustrup)


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