-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 In message <[email protected]>, John Denker <[email protected]> writes
>To say the same thing the other way, I was always amazed that the >Nazis were unable to figure out that their crypto was broken during >WWII. There were experiments they could have done, such as sending >out a few U-boats under strict radio silence and comparing their >longevity to others. In fact the Nazis did have many suspicions that Enigma was compromised, no more so (this from memory, the books with the fuller account are on a shelf several thousand miles away from my current desk) than in the Python incident where the Devonshire was sent to sink a German U-boat refuelling boat ... and the Dorsetshire turned up at the same place by chance and chipped in. The subsequent German inquiry (two enemy ships appearing over the horizon heading straight for your refuelling point in the middle of the empty South Atlantic is deeply worrying) relied upon them reading our North Atlantic convoy traffic (they were breaking Allied codes at that point in the war) where they found no evidence of Enigma acquired information being used to avoid U-boat movements. This was because their inquiry happened to coincide with a short period during which we were not reading their traffic! The inquiry concluded that Enigma was not broken (which was strictly correct at that moment) and it carried on being used. Such are the random chances, good and bad, which occur in the real world. Of course there were improvements made to Enigma throughout the war both to the hardware and also to operating procedures... it was harder to break in 1945 than 1939. >So my question is: What would we have to do to produce /tamper-evident/ >data security? > >As a preliminary outline of the sort of thing I'm talking about, you >could send an encrypted message that says > "The people at 1313 Mockingbird Lane have an > enormous kiddie porn studio in their basement." >and then watch closely. See how long it takes until they get raided. you will have noted the requirement for some of the agencies who have been given NSA material (such as telco metadata) to recreate it for the benefit of their court cases ... so you'd probably fail to observe any background activity that tested whether this information was plausible or not (assuming that the NSA considered this issue important enough to pursue); and then some chance event would occur that caused someone from Law Enforcement (or even a furnace maintenance technician) to have to look in the basement. You'd be left saying "this proves it" and everyone else will be spending their time commenting on whether your particular style of tinfoil hat appeared sartorially suitable - -- richard Richard Clayton They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. Benjamin Franklin -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGPsdk version 1.7.1 iQA/AwUBUik0UeINNVchEYfiEQIj1wCgjvXptGYkMdfKFI7pQfQuMUZJOAkAmwV2 UiNLZIncCKWCsUynA0p5y/Ws =fqW2 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ The cryptography mailing list [email protected] http://www.metzdowd.com/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
