Puzzle Palace, by James Bamford, page 433 - 435 With the ending of Project Lightning in 1962, so too ended NSA's support of unclassified public research. Lightning had helped prime the scientific pump, and competition within private industry, it was felt, would ensure that the flow of technological advances in the computer and associated fields would continue to pour out. The Puzzle Palace, through CRD, SCAMP-ALP, and a select number of key consultants and contractors, could now focus its full attention, as well as its dollars, on a science where there was no competition, where NSA alone controlled a monopoly: cryptology. But along came Lucifer. (snips - discussing how easy it was to trick remote automatic tellers in the early days of e-banking) To counter such possibilities, and realizing that data communications held enormous market potential, IBM board chairman Thomas Watson, Jr., during the late 1960s set up a cryptology research group at IBM's research laboratory in Yorktown Heights, New York. Led by Horst Feistel, the research group concluded its work in 1971 with the development of a cipher code-named Lucifer, which it promptly sold to Lloyd's of London for use in a cash-dispensing system that IBM had developed. Spurred by the success of Lucifer, IBM turned to Walter Tuchman, a thirty-eight-year-old engineer with a doctorate in information theory, then working at the company's Kingston development lab. A sixteen-year veteran of IBM, Tuchman was asked to head up a data security products group that would transform Lucifer into a highly marketable commodity. (snips - discussing Carl Meyer's contribution to strengthening the cipher called Lucifer) At about the same time that IBM was turning its attention to cryptography, another group was beginning to study the subject with great interest. In 1968 the National Bureau of Standards, charged since 1965 with developing standards for the federal government's purchase and use of computers, initiated a series of studies to determine the government's need for computer security. As a result of the studies, the NBS decided to search for an encryption method, or algorithm, that could serve as a governmentwide standard for the storage and transmission of unclassified data. Solicitation for such an encryption algorithm took place in May 1973 and August 1974. The timing could not have been better for IBM, which submitted for consideration its Lucifer cipher. Labeled by David Kahn "the tiniest known 'cipher machine' ever produced," Lucifer actually consisted of a thumbnail-sized silicon "chip" containing an extremely complex integrated circuit. The "key" to the cipher was a long string of "bits" - 0's and 1's - the combination of which would vary from user to user just as the grooves in front-door key will vary from neighbor to neighbor. (snips - discussion of cipher codes and how they work including the S-boxes.) Just as more grooves on the key usually mean a more difficult lock to pick, more bits in the cipher key will decrease the chances of successful cryptanalysis. For this reason IBM developed Lucifer with a key 128 bits long. ****But before it submitted the cipher to the NBS, it mysteriously broke off more than half the key.******** (KK's comments: is there in any sense as to why IBM would do that? So, they could control some of the keys to their cipher?) >From the very beginning, the NSA had taken an enormous interest in Project Lucifer. It had even indirectly lent a had in the development of the S-box structures. "IBM was involved with the NSA on an ongoing bases," admitted Alan Konheim, a senior employee at IBM's Yorktown Heights lab. "They (NSA employees) came up every couple of months to find out what IBM was doing." For the first time in its long history, NSA was facing competition from within its own country. The outsiders were no longer mere hobbyists but highly skilled professionals, supported by unlimited funds and interested more in perfection than in speed. - - - - - - End Quote from Chapter 9, Competition, The Puzzle Palace by James Bamford- - - - - - - I can't imagine why IBM called the code "Lucifer." KK *********************************************************** EWAR-L Electronic Warfare Mailing List To unsubscribe or subscribe: send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the following text: unsubscribe EWAR-L or subscribe EWAR-L. To post messages, send to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. Previous posts: <http://www.sonic.net/~west/ewar/digest.htm>. EWAR Web site: <http://www.sonic.net/~west/ewar/ewar.htm>. -Wes Thomas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, list owner
