[2676] in Kerberos
Gotcha chip being illegal, how can you test?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Charles B Cranston)
Mon Apr 19 17:53:28 1993
Date: Mon, 19 April 1993 17:38:18 -0500
From: Charles B Cranston <zben@ni.umd.edu>
To: bf4grjc@bell-atl.com
Cc: smb@research.att.com, kerberos@Athena.MIT.EDU,
In-Reply-To: Your message <9304192122.AA09916@tommylab.wash.bell-atl.com> of
> ...a chip with an identical external configuration
> that uses some completely different encryption method,
> but is plug compatible with the PCS equipment or the
> motherboard of a computer? Lets call this the GOTCHA chip.
> Any two users who use the GOTCHA chip instead of the
> CLIPPER chip WILL have a secure, UNTAPPABLE, channel.
> (Also: Can the govt. make production/possesion/use of
> the GOTCHA chip illegal?
If you believe that one cannot necessarily physically
reverse-engineer the chip, how could you TELL if a
particular chip (taken from a suspect's equipment)
is a CLIPPER or a GOTCHA? In particular, it seems to
me to be fairly easy to build a chip that would be a
standard CLIPPER most of the time, but could be made
into a GOTCHA chip (perhaps by passing a special
cleartext message through it). Unless law enforcement
knew this metakey, how could you prove what kind of
chip it is?
