🚀 go-pugleaf

I believe that the intelligence agencies only manage to crack a small percentage
(maybe less than 1%) of all traffic. I have heard they save all traffic,
and that it takes a freight-car of tape per day.

It is not possible that they are intercepting all interesting traffic, even
though foreign military and intelligence traffic is a small percentage
(again less than 1%) of the interesting traffic of the world.

Now, Internet is in its infancy. It is already lots of megabytes per day.
If we include the private versions, certainly it is many 1000s of megabytes
per day.

So, at the time the world gets serious about networks, it will have gotten
serious about data and line security. All comm lines will be separately
encrypted. All mail, etc. will use at least one level of sophisticated
encryption.

From a cracker's point of view, this is horrid. They have to expend a lot of
effort to determine where files begin and end (due to the data link encryption),
and lots of those files are copies of the latest pinup sloshing around the
net.

I believe that no intelligence agency can handle the logistics. SPoofing is
supposed to be a way of circumventing these logistical problems, but even
sorting out the interesting traffic from all the chaf isn't going to
be easy.

Logistics also protects against spoofing, which has to be complete, or
even lousy security measures will detect it. There are thousands of nodes
on Internet. There will be millions when we get serious. The network will
be extremely dynamic. So, we only need a Consumer Report type group (or
perhaps several) to give a daily update of the number of attempted spoofs
against their test sites and mail to/from cooperating users. Once
procedures are published to test for spoofs, lots of people will do it
occassionaly and lots of internal security organizations will test
systematically.

So, IMHO, spoofing is something to be concerned about, but it is just another
annoying environmental factor, like viruses (both biological and computer).

Lew
-- 
Lew Glendenning		rlglende@netcom.com	408-245-7488

"Perspective is worth 80 IQ points."	Nils Bohr (or somebody like that).