Re: Russia Intercepts US Military Communications?
On Sun, Mar 30, 2003 at 07:38:29PM -0500, reusch wrote: 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. It's not the case. I routinely listen in on communications. Most of the planes have either KY-57 or Have Quick. The KY is digital and probably better than DES encryption. Adequate except for stupidly using AM (Amplidude Modulation, aka ancient modulation) which along with poor maintenance makes it often unusable. Have Quick is actually anti-jam and often mistaken for encryption. Likely the Russians can read it. The real problem is that flaky encrypted comms are a tactical problem so it is often better to use clear comms when time is the issue. Not too helpful to know what's about to happen if you can't do anything about it anyway. Otherwise, yet another thing is very wrong about this war and the infrastructure that supports it. -MFR It's amazing to me to listen to engineers try a test 15 times and then when it finally works, declare victory and go on to the next one. The military industrial complex is about money, not reliable high-tech systems. I was more impressed with American expertise 40 years ago than I am now. -- - | 73,E-mail | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | Lyn Kennedywebpage | http://home.earthlink.net/~lrkn | | K5QWB ICBM | 32.5 North 96.9 West| ---Livin' on an information dirt road a few miles off the superhighway--- - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Russia Intercepts US Military Communications?
On Mon, Mar 31, 2003 at 02:59:11PM -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am much more concerned about the apparent lack of good IFF (missile batteries lighting up the RAF plane that they then shot down; the USAF plane that reacted to being lit up by firing at and destroying the ground radar; stories about our close air-support firing on our tanks and other ground units)! This sounds like it is very close to criminal negligence! Do these units NOT have IFF or are they not using it or does it just not work all of the time ? Geraldo wants to know!! - chazzchezz IFF is no longer limited to 6x8-foot Union Jacks flown by British vehicles but it's obvious there are still problems. Considering how much effort I know about in the last ten years, one would think they have every plane, vehicle, and ship tagged with something. My father fought WWII in Dallas, installing IFF in airplanes. Plenty of time to perfect these concepts. One needs to keep in mind that the problem is often simple failure to communicate. The Combat Air Patrols over the US in the last year give some insight: Fighters in Texas taking direction from Florida rather than talking to the Air Traffic Controllers below. I listen to private pilots near Dubya's ranch complaining about being attacked by F-16s while following directions from ATC. The F-16s chase scheduled airliners into Waco. Perhaps they don't have weapons and that is all that has saved planes from being shot down in Texas. -- - | 73,E-mail | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | Lyn Kennedywebpage | http://home.earthlink.net/~lrkn | | K5QWB ICBM | 32.5 North 96.9 West| ---Livin' on an information dirt road a few miles off the superhighway--- - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Scientists question electronic voting
On Fri, Mar 07, 2003 at 02:55:19PM -0500, Barney Wolff wrote: On Fri, Mar 07, 2003 at 12:45:41PM -0600, (Mr) Lyn R. Kennedy wrote: Seems there is still a problem unless each eligible voter brings a smart- card, warm finger, eyeball, etc. This is a perfect example of what I'm complaining about: You're holding electronic voting to a much higher standard than you are paper ballots. If it's not a higher standard then it violates the If it aint broke, don't fixit rule. But I'm concerned about KISS and the right tool for the job more than anything. Perfect is the enemy of better. We do have to take care that electronic voting does not introduce new and catastrophic vulnerabilities. Other than that, it merely has to be better (and no more expensive) than the best existing systems. Unfortunately, there is a trend toward more complex systems as a solution to everything. Families of firefighters who died in the WTC collapse would probably have been happier if they had the old low-tech radios from 20 years ago rather than whiz-bang gadgetry that failed. There was no plan to fall back on since politicians believed the salesman who told them it wouldn't fail. And the proposed fix is more complexity rather than the right tools for the job. This is what happened in the Florida elections as well. Upgrading the voting systems was the problem, not the solution. More complex machines add to the number of failure modes. I'm in favor of using modern technology. But I don't want to move to electronic systems just to make some salesman happy. Modern technology and public-key cryptography seems to offer some real advantages to verifying eligibility, one-person-one-vote, and vote- whever-you-are but many such issues are not even addressed. Passed over in favor of making money for voting machine companies. -- - | 73,E-mail | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | Lyn Kennedywebpage | http://home.earthlink.net/~lrkn | | K5QWB ICBM | 32.5 North 96.9 West| ---Livin' on an information dirt road a few miles off the superhighway--- - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Scientists question electronic voting
On Thu, Mar 06, 2003 at 10:35:22PM -0500, Barney Wolff wrote: We certainly don't want an electronic system that is more vulnerable than existing systems, but sticking with known-to-be-terrible systems is not a sensible choice either. Paper ballots, folded, and dropped into a large transparent box, is not a broken system. It's voting machines, punch cards, etc that are broken. I don't recall seeing news pictures of an election in any other western democracy where they used machines. And the Florida election was apparently affected more by eligible voters turned away from the polls than by votes sold. Maybe crypto, smart-cards, biometrics, etc would help authenticate voter eligibility and enforce one vote per live voter (zero per dead voter). -- - | 73,E-mail | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | Lyn Kennedywebpage | http://home.earthlink.net/~lrkn | | K5QWB ICBM | 32.5 North 96.9 West| ---Livin' on an information dirt road a few miles off the superhighway--- - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Scientists question electronic voting
On Fri, Mar 07, 2003 at 02:22:23AM -0500, Barney Wolff wrote: On Fri, Mar 07, 2003 at 12:50:44AM -0600, (Mr) Lyn R. Kennedy wrote: Paper ballots, folded, and dropped into a large transparent box, is not a broken system. It's voting machines, punch cards, etc that are broken. I don't recall seeing news pictures of an election in any other western democracy where they used machines. Surely you jest - where else did the term ballot-stuffing come from? Perhaps you can elaborate on how ballot-stuffing is done without the co-operation of most of the people overseeing a polling place. The key, imho, is =2 independent means of counting the votes. Online, as each vote is cast, and a paper trail, for later reconciliation. It's hard for both to be skewed by the same amount, and differences will both raise suspicion and give an order of magnitude of the fraud. That seems to be the direction the experts are heading. What is to prevent the people overseeing a polling place from casting the votes for the dead? They would be recorded properly both ways. Or they could void and re-vote for ordinary voters. Seems there is still a problem unless each eligible voter brings a smart- card, warm finger, eyeball, etc. -- - | 73,E-mail | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | Lyn Kennedywebpage | http://home.earthlink.net/~lrkn | | K5QWB ICBM | 32.5 North 96.9 West| ---Livin' on an information dirt road a few miles off the superhighway--- - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Shamir factoring machine uninteresting?
On Sun, Jan 26, 2003 at 07:29:08PM -0500, Perry E. Metzger wrote: I find it odd that there has been so little comment on TWIRL. One would think that the crushing of 512 bit RSA keys and a strong demonstration of the weakness of 1024 bit RSA keys would have provoked some comment on the list. Any comments on why no one commented? It's easier to consider it unimportant than calculate how important it might be. My questions here trying to understand how significant some other weaknesses might be make me think most readers are afraid to admit they don't understand some things. Is this a mathematician vs engineer problem? (I'm neither, I'm an inventor). -- - | 73,E-mail | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | Lyn Kennedywebpage | http://home.earthlink.net/~lrkn | | K5QWB ICBM | 32.5 North 96.9 West| ---Livin' on an information dirt road a few miles off the superhighway--- - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
