🚀 go-pugleaf

jcam2@mdw031.cc.monash.edu.au (Mr J Cameron) writes:

>GuyD@world.net wrote:

>: It is a fact that Telstra had a software development project in
>: progress in early 1995, who's aim is to monitor and log phone connections
>: through their exchanges, to determine:-
>:   a) Which calls are voice, and which are modem.
>:   b) If modem, what baud rate and protocol.
>:   c) Given (b), to determine whether the link is using encryption.
>:   d) Lastly, given a positive (c), to attempt to analyse what _sort_
>:      of encryption it is.

>Come on! Certainly a ban on cryptography is a stupid and unenforcable
>law, but claiming that THEY are monitoring all our phone calls to check
>if people are using encryption is absurb.
[...]
>Furthermore, is it even possible to tell the difference between
>encrypted and non-encrypted data? A good encryption scheme could 'hide'
>cyphertext in some other data, such as an image (steganography). Or you
>could develop your own encryption system that has no well known header
>that would identify it.

I believe that a) and b) are feasable to do, given a small amount of
computing power (or even a smallish neural network).
Determining whether the data stream is compressed or not requires it
to be at least partly decoded -- and we all know that that's difficult
given the number of MIPS your modem card throws at that problem.

Besides, if connections were to be monitored like this (note that the
Australian government is of the leftist kind) people would start to
use encryption routinely; I can imagine using a fast venom cipher between
home and the net.provider I use.

Frank
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Frank A. Vorstenbosch        +31-(70)-355 5241        falstaff@xs4all.nl