[606] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
RE: Escrow agencies closed?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Frantz)
Mon Apr 21 13:30:38 1997
In-Reply-To: <v01540b01af7ea085df74@[172.17.1.61]>
Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 09:23:27 -0700
To: smith@securecomputing.com (Rick Smith), Black Unicorn <unicorn@schloss.li>,
Larry Layten <larry@ljl.com>
From: Bill Frantz <frantz@netcom.com>
Cc: "cryptography@c2.net" <cryptography@c2.net>
At 9:29 AM -0700 4/19/97, Rick Smith wrote:
>At 6:33 PM 4/18/97, Bill Frantz wrote:
>
>>I like the idea that someone, probably NSA, found a fatal flaw in the key
>>"escrow" portion of the protocol, and they are trying to prevent other
>>governments from GAKing their data. But then, I am a wide-eyed optimist.
>
>In other words, situations were developing in which the govt couldn't
>recover keys. I'm positive that's the inevitable result of any key recovery
>scheme, given enough calendar time. Security properties are notoriously
>hard to ensure in the real world.
Actually my dream was that they discovered an easy way to break the
"escrow" portion of the protocol. Anyone who also discovered it could read
any message. That is why they are moving to two storage locations for
secret keys, which is only as insecure as the least secure of the two
locations.
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