PGP and HMG

[David_Biggins@usermgmt.com]

I'd be slightly kinder to HMG here (I know, it's against my nature,
but...)

Here is one suggestion of several I could offer:

Given that on some critical occasions they have been ahead of the
published work in encryption, it is possible that 

a)  They have tools that take out current encryption.  Starting say with
an unpublished 'fast' method for factoring large numbers into primes.

b)  They believe that other governments, even "friendly" ones such as
the USA may have such tools too.

c)  They have other strong encryption that such tools do not handle.

d)  They do not want this encryption entering non-HMG use, or being
analysed by the wider cryptographic world, since if it falls into
criminal hands,  monitoring criminal intelligence gets harder.

Note that I do not necessarily believe this premise,  but I would at
least want to think carefully about it.

## dave ##


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jonathan Care [mailto:jonc@lacunae.org]
> Sent: Saturday, May 05, 2001 11:45
> To: ukcrypto@chiark.greenend.org.uk
> Subject: RE: PGP and HMG
> 
> 
> > > So, are you saying that PGP is not of 'government strength' then?
> > Sounds like standard "not invented here" syndrome so 
> beloved of government
> > everywhere - they have internal, unpublished crypto which may or
> > may not be
> > more advanced than cap'n crunch decoder rings, but is 
> obvously better than
> > commercial systems since it is MORE SECRET ;)
> 
> This is, of course, a major flaw in relying heavily on 
> obscuring the methods
> used, and one that has been discussed extensively in this forum.
> 
> While its true that for commercial well-known systems, the 
> more ciphertext
> one has, the more probable it is that a statistical analysis will be
> successfully undertaken. It is certain that when the secrecy 
> of a system is
> considered to be a given constraint, then once that 
> constraint is violated,
> the whole architecture becomes unstable. The task of breaking 
> that secrecy
> then becomes a valuable objective of the opposing team.
> 
> Architectures such as PGP using established, peer-reviewed 
> systems within
> them, do not normally make the assumption of secrecy of all 
> the parts, only
> of identifiers and authenticators such as the private key and 
> associated
> passwords - hence it is unlikely that having the algorithms and other
> subsystems exposed to unfriendly eyes will create an insecurity.
> 
> I don't think its quite the "not invented here" syndrome, but more the
> acknowledgement of the fact that the infrastructure around 
> which crypto is
> used in HMG relies on a need-to-know clearance, and hence 
> systems which are
> developed for use within that infrastructure will carry forward the
> assumptions made by the designers, shaped by the environment 
> in which they
> work.
> 
> With kind regards,
> Jonathan Care,
> T: +44 1428 601106
> F: +44 1428 601105
> M: +44 7775 938383
> E: jonc@lacunae.org
> 
> 
> 
>