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Blaze: Key escrow from a safe distance
Mat Blaze has published a look back at the
clipper chip controversy [PDF] for an upcoming conference. It is a
good retrospective of a crucial moment in the crypto wars. "And so
even before the Web became synonymous with the Internet, before a single
bit of encrypted SSL traffic was generated, lines were being drawn for what
would become an epic battle that would preoccupy a generation of cryptographers. (And it was a bad time for that community to be preoccupied;
this was the same time that the basic foundations of the of web and other
critical communications technologies were designed and put into
place. We've been living with the security, or lack of security, built in
to that infrastructure ever since)."
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Blaze: Key escrow from a safe distance Posted Nov 2, 2011 19:33 UTC (Wed) by jmah (subscriber, #80103) [Link]
Just wanted to say that this was a great, easy read.
Blaze: Key escrow from a safe distance Posted Nov 3, 2011 4:16 UTC (Thu) by PO8 (guest, #41661) [Link]
This is a great paper. However, my inner conspiracy theorist fears Blaze may be missing one of the goals of the Clipper program in his conclusion.
Blaze notes that key escrow was ultimately unworkable, but that the fight over key escrow diverted a generation of crypto and security specialists from properly securing the fundamental protocols of the modern Internet (at least to some degree). I can't help but wonder if that was Plan B all along...
Blaze: Key escrow from a safe distance Posted Nov 3, 2011 6:17 UTC (Thu) by pr1268 (subscriber, #24648) [Link] You raise an interesting point with that. Of course, it seems outlandish, even grossly wasteful, to have AT&T spend lots of R&D money on a flawed wiretapping protocol and its hardware and (presumably) lots of marketing money convincing the U.S. government to actually buy the TSD. But I don't disagree with you. (I've been known to entertain conspiracy theories every now and then.) After reading §2.3 of Blaze's paper, my respect for AT&T's Bell Labs just went up a few notches. Talk about integrity.
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