🚀 go-pugleaf

karger@osf.org (Paul A. Karger) writes:

>In article <6880@transfer.stratus.com>, cme@ellisun.sw.stratus.com (Carl Ellison) writes:
>|> 
>|> To achieve complete spoofing of the kind being discussed here, it's not a
>|> computer system for which covert channels are being prevented but a social
>|> system and the enemy has to achieve it without letting anyone know that the
>|> censor/intruder is active -- in a society in which free speech is a guaranteed
>|> right, no less.
>|> 
>|> How about taking this discussion to alt.tv.mission.impossible?


>While in many cases, it is possible to detect the fact that
>all communications are being trapped, that is not the case if
>the computer in question is being used in a dedicated applications
>environment with non-computer-literate users or worse still in an
>isolated location with no on-site operators, but only a security guard 
>at the door.

>For example, a commercial system at an oil-drilling site or a defense radar
>system at an isolated radar site could easily be vulnerable to complete 
>trapping and spoofing of communications.  Even a bank in downtown Manhattan
>could be vulnerable, if no one in the branch was familiar with the signs
>that spoofing is happening!  The common attitude is that if the computer
>says so, then it must be right.  

>This is a people problem, not a mathematical
>problem, but encryption must be used in the real world, not in an ivory
>tower.  That is why keys need to get changed and procedures are very critical.
>The British would likely not have broken Enigma during WWII, if the Germans
>had used the system in its theoretically best ways.  Most of the breaks
>came from bad procedures and lazy crypto operators.

Absolutely correct.  It should be noted that the "Enigma crack" did NOT 
crack all Enigma ciphers being used by all branches of the German military
service.  Luftwaffe codes were regularly broken because their operators
tended to be lazy and incompetent.  The Naval codes were only infrequently
broken, and there was at least one branch of the service (the SS?) whose
Enigma codes were NEVER broken during the course of the war.  See John 
Keegan's "The Second World War" for more exact information.

Steven Kellmeyer
-- 

Steve Kellmeyer 
kellmeye@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu