Rich Salz wrote:
> Anyone know anything about these guys?
>
> [I may be having a knee jerk reaction, but this smells snake oily. --pm]
>
> Anyone get the snail-mail invite?
> [from original message]
> The technology we are talking about is a new cryptographic key
> distribution system -The Constructive Key Management System® (CKM®)
> created by TECSEC® Incorporated. CKM provides a quantum leap in the
> ability to securely access information of all kinds discretely over any
> network. CKM is extremely scaleable and satisfies the requirements of
> the new X9.69 ANSI standard. CrypTEC Systems is supplying the
> CKM-enabled? smart cards and supporting software and systems to TECSEC
> for use by the various government agencies.
I'm not sure they are the same thing, but TECSEC is the name of a company
which made a crypto/key-management product called Veil, in roughly the
mid 1990's. That product used only symmetric key encryption and had the
feature of write-only "keys" enforced entirely within software, and without
a trusted 3rd party such as in Kerberos. (I leave it to the reader to
judge the
snake-oiliness from that fact alone.)
Furthermore, I was told by several fromer TECSEC employees that senior
managment of the company had strong 3-letter agency ties. It's deeply
personal matter whether you feel that such ties increase the snake-oil
factor.
I would ask them if they are affiliated with the same TECSEC which sold
Veil, and if so how their product differs, if at all. The quality of the
answer you get should help a lot with this determination ...
Cheers,
John Pliam
http://www.ima.umn.edu/~pliam
