Subject: [Raven] Some Articles To Read

From: "Richard Payne" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 18 Nov 1999 08:56:01 -0500

Some articles from the December 1999 Dr. Dobb's might be of some use for
people trying to formulate a rational IETF position on wiretapping. My
choice of articles, with handy moral for reference:

1) Eva Bozkoi's article on IP Security Protocols is a good introduction to
IPSEC and SKIP. People wanting to debate protocols should make a point of
reading this, not overlooking Diffie-Hellman key exchange. Some of these
protocols are explicitly designed to resist "man in the middle" attacks.

MORAL: "The State should not permit private use of strong crypto" is rapidly
becoming equivalent to "The State should not permit private use of the
Internet".

2) Jim and David Shapiro's article on implementing Ron Rivest's chaffing and
winnowing will make this accessible to a much wider group of people.

MORAL: If you don't like strong crypto, you'd better ban digital signatures
too. Now we know how likely _that_ is...

ANOTHER MORAL: If you think "We'll _make_ the users hand over their keys" is
practical, then read the article, and ask yourself how you would be able to
prove in court that "I believe that Colonel Mustard did it." was the correct
plaintext, as opposed to "There is no question that the butler is the
culprit."

Schneier's article is informative too, but more in the general security
vein.

Richard Payne

_______________________________________________
raven mailing list
[email-masked]
http://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/raven