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The following archive was created by hippie-mail 7.98617-22 on Fri Aug 21 1998 - 17:19:16 ADT
Bruce Schneier (schneier@counterpane.com)
Tue, 30 Jun 1998 15:41:13 -0500
At 09:47 AM 6/30/98 -0400, Rich Salz wrote:
>>When the AES candidates get heavily beaten on, and when one of them
>>gets the NSA secret handshake, I may feel comfortable with one of
>>them.
>
>This brings up an interesting point that runs the risk of going off-topic
>if we're not careful: how would we know that the AES "competition" isn't
>rigged? The Skipjack release seems pretty well-timed to get an escrow-
>friendly encryption system accepted by the general public.
Easy. Skipjack is not "escrow friendly." It's a block cipher like any others.
If you are conspiratorially minded, you could ask why NSA gave us an
80-bit key when we're trying for a 128-bit key.
But I attended a SKipjack symposium where NSA said that Skipjack is
just an interim solution until AES is approved.
Bruce
**********************************************************************
Bruce Schneier, President, Counterpane Systems Phone: 612-823-1098
101 E Minnehaha Parkway, Minneapolis, MN 55419 Fax: 612-823-1590
http://www.counterpane.com
The following archive was created by hippie-mail 7.98617-22 on Fri Aug 21 1998 - 17:19:16 ADT