Subject: File 1--AT&T Lab Scientist Discovers Flaw in Clipper Chip

From: anon <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 2 June, 1994 23:54:21 EDT

(The government's proposed encryption technology may not be as
secure as proponents want us to think. This might be of interest
to you--anon).

          Scientist Insists U.S. Computer Chip has Big Flaw
                           By John Markoff
           Extracted from the New York Times, June 2, 1994

Technology that the Clinton administration has been promoting for use
by law enforcement officials to eavesdrop on electronically scrambled
telephone and computer conversations is flawed and can be defeated, a
computer scientist says.

Someone with sufficient computer skills can defeat the government's
technology by using it to encode messages so that not even the
government can crack them, according to AT&T Bell Laboratories
researcher Matthew Blaze.

     (The article explains the background to the fight to implement
     Clipper by the Clinton Adminstration as a means to help
     law enforcment, and notes that the technolgoy has been
     widely criticized by communications executives and others)

The industry also fears foreign customers might shun equipment if
Washington keeps a set of electronic keys.  But now Blaze. as a result
of his independent testing of Clipper, is putting forth perhaps the
most compelling criticism yet:  The technology simply doesn't work as
advertised.

Blaze spelled out his findings in a draft report that he has been
ciculat-ing quietly among computer researchers and federal agencies in
recent weeks.

"The government is fighting an uphill battle," said Martin Hellman. a
Stanford University computer scientist who has read Blaze's paper and
who is an expert in data encryption.  "People who want to work around
Clipper will be able to do it."

But the National Security Agency. the government's electronic spying
agency, said Wednesday that Clipper remained useful, despite the flaw
uncovered by Blaze.

"Anyone interested in circumventing law enforcement access would most
likely choose simpler alternatives," Michael Smith, the agency's
director of policy. said in a written statement.

"More difficult and time consuming efforts. like those discussed in
the Blaze paper, are very unlikely to be employed."

   (The article summarizes the government's defense for Clipper)

But industry executives have resisted adopting Clipper.  Because the
underlying mathematics of the  technology remain a classified
government secret, industry officials say there is no way to be
certain that it is as secure as encoding techniques already on the
market.

They also fear that Clipper's electronic back door, which is designed
for legal wiretapping of communications. could make it subject to
abuse by the government or civilian computer experts.  Privacy-rights
advocates have cited similar concerns.

Industry executives also have worried that making Clipper a fed-eral
government standard would be a first step toward prescribing the
technology for private industry or requiring that it be included in
sophisticated computing and communications devices that are to be
exported.

Blaze said that the flaw he discovered in the Clipper design would not
permit a third party to break a coded computer conversation.

But it would enable two people to have a secret conversation that law
enforcement officials could not unscramble.  And that could render
Clipper no more useful to the government than encryption technology
already on the market to which it does not hold the mathematical keys.

"Nothing I've found affects the security of the Clipper system from
the point of view of people who might want to break the system." Blaze
said. "This does quite the opposite. Somebody can use it to circumvent
the law enforcement surveillance mechanism."

     The article concludes by noting that Blaze said that several
     simple changes to the Clipper design could fix the flow, but that
     this might be difficult because the changes would require the
     government to start over in designing clipper. The governmetn has
     already started ordering telephones containing the Clipper chip
     for federal agencies.