🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <602@mcgill-vision.UUCP> mouse@mcgill-vision.UUCP (der Mouse) writes:
>>...bribe an insider!  Startling new idea isn't it :-)
>Right.  People are often the weakest link in a security system.
>
>Assuming, that is that there *is* an insider who knows the key.  If
>they were smart, there is no such person.  (They killed him as soon as
>he typed in the numbers....:-)  A box could have, let us say, a
>cosmic-ray detector which it uses to generate large numbers, then maybe
>it counds by twos until it finds primes.  (No flames on details please,
>I just want to show the idea is feasible.)

OK.  Bribe an insider to learn the technology and the time when keys are
generated.  At that time, a nuclear accelerator in a truck on the street
outside will create a modulated signal for the key generator's detector.
Noise might interfere with the signal, but the technique might skew the keys
in a known way.  [OK, let's not get into a counteratomic spoofing discussion]

Any method which uses an external signal depends upon secrecy of the
algorithm.  If an outsider can't spoof the signal, he might be able
to listen to it and duplicate the key generation.

With a radio receiver as the detector, the above could be called "electronic
warfare".  But in the atomic field, "nuclear warfare" has another
meaning, although that also messes up detectors :-)

-- 
Scot E. Wilcoxon   Minn Ed Comp Corp  {quest,dayton,meccts}!mecc!sewilco
(612)481-3507           sewilco@MECC.COM       ihnp4!meccts!mecc!sewilco
   
  "Who's that lurking over there?  Is that Merv Griffin?"