Why "carnivore" type systems can't be (entirely) open source

[Brian Morrison]

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On Sun, 28 Jan 2001 20:57:35 -0000, Owen Lewis wrote:

>You seem to miss the point. Without STO, the coding of A5 etc. would have
>been 'widely' known even before the system was deployed. Ergo, it is
>reasonable to assume that a crack would have been found after about as much
>time as between the publication of the actual crack from the knowledge of
>GSM cipher that was widely distributed among those outside govt service with
>an interest in crypto. The marked difference between the release of
>knowledge to crack time and the GSM development to 1999 can only be
>attributable, in the main, to the somewhat maligned use of STO.

That's just a sop to the ill-advised choice of algorithm. GSM should
have chosen a secure algorithm, it isn't as if the key for a given call
could not have been obtained from the network by an LEA, probably in
real time if necessary. I suspect it was done to allow for general
trawling....


- -- 

Brian Morrison                                  bdm@fenrir.org.uk

 "Almost noon, and she had yet to go the launderette in Concreton to 
 thaw out chickens in the spin-drier..."

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