Thus spake "Iljitsch van Beijnum" <iljitsch@muada.com>
On 29-apr-04, at 7:02, Stephen Sprunk wrote:
The feds clearly have the power to get through or around encryption suspected criminals are using: the FBI reports that there have been _zero_ cases nationwide over the past several years where the use of encryption has prevented them or other agencies from obtaining the evidence needed, even when "secure" tools like PGP, SSL, or IPsec are used.
I have a hard time believing this...
The DOJ was directed by Congress to collect data and report back each year, and while I don't trust any law-enforcement types in general, I do trust in their fear of Congressional inquiries. Besides, given the FBI's past position on crypto, especially key escrow, I have a hard time believing they'd claim crypto wasn't a problem if it actually was -- that's counter-productive for them.
So what do they do? Send a team in to retrieve the key from your system? Borrow some CPU time from the NSA?
The reasons for the FBI's conclusion were not given. It's "common knowledge" that it's cheaper to attack the key-management systems (or the end systems) than the crypto, so that's one possibility. Another is that the existing implementations are flawed in ways that reveal the keys and/or plaintext. Last, it's possible that the plaintext was never recovered and the pattern of communication was enough evidence in itself. S Stephen Sprunk "Stupid people surround themselves with smart CCIE #3723 people. Smart people surround themselves with K5SSS smart people who disagree with them." --Aaron Sorkin