🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <66926@cup.portal.com> Christopher_C_Lapp@cup.portal.com writes:

   How about a cryptosystem that used the teachings of various
   religious figures in the Bible as its key?As a spy, I would write a
   passionate letter detailing my sins and moral turpitude to my spy
   partner, and he/she would assign a "long beep" to the aspects of my
   sins that were in accordance with the bible, and a "short beep" to
   those that weren't.  T output would be a Morse-code of biblical
   proportions! By using the bible as t key, we could have
   uncrackable, undetectable, and public key encryption.  Any
   comments?  Chris Lapp

Not really uncrackable as the Bible is publicly available.
Read "The Key to Rebecca", by Ken Follett, for a good story
revolving around spies breaking a book code.

One advantage of the Bible is that, at least until recent times, carrying
one wouldn't draw suspicion to the spy.  (Carrying a Hagelin machine
would be pretty incriminating).  As a modern day alternative, I've
often thought the No Such Agency could do the following:

   - write encryption/decryption code that runs in an embedded
     micro of the kind found in calculators.

   - go to favorite defense contractor that also makes calculators
     (e.g. TI), and say "we want you to make a new model of simple,
     consumer calculator, priced so lots of people will buy them
     (here's some $$$ to make it profitable), and by the way, when
     the user types this undocumented 20-keystroke sequence, it should
     run this code that we'll supply (from previous step).

   - The calculator goes on the market and becomes popular, so
     the spy can carry one without drawing suspicion.  The special
     key sequence is made long enough and weird enough that no one
     will ever enter it by accident.  Of course, hitting clear
     in this mode reverts it to a normal calculator, in case 
     someone walks in on the spy (see Follett's "Eye of the Needle").

In article <66926@cup.portal.com>, Christopher_C_Lapp@cup.portal.com writes:
|> How about a cryptosystem that used the teachings of various
|> religious figures in the Bible as its key?As a spy, I would write
|> a passionate letter detailing my sins and moral turpitude to my spy partner, 
|> and he/she would assign a "long beep" to the aspects of my sins that were
|> in accordance with the bible, and  a "short beep" to those that weren't.  T
|> output would be a Morse-code of biblical proportions! By using the bible as t
|> key, we could have uncrackable, undetectable, and public key encryption.
|> Any comments?
|> Chris Lapp

I'm just getting started in studying cryptology but it seems to me that
the magnitude of such a message would outweigh any advantage gained by
do it.  Also every spy would have to be well versed in theology, which
has taken some people a life time in itself, in order to know which
sins are and which sins are not in the Bible.  While I'm in a low flame
mode how about problems that would arise from using different versions
of the Bible?

Just my $0.02
Later!
Forrest

In article <66926@cup.portal.com> Christopher_C_Lapp@cup.portal.com  
writes:
 "How about a cryptosystem that used the teachings of various
 "religious figures in the Bible as its key?
 "he/she would assign a "long beep" to sins in the bible, and a
 "short beep" to those that weren't. By using the bible as the key, we
 "could have uncrackable, undetectable, and public key encryption.
 "Any comments?
 "Chris Lapp

Why not use another more obscure text and do the same thing.  For example  
use a different pulp romance novel each time and associate your sins with  
those which actually occured in the book used.  This is by no means  
uncrackable, just real obscure.  It breaks down when you have to tell your  
partner what book to use, if someone were to find out they would have your  
code down cold in minutes.  The way around this is to use an encryption  
like RSA where each person has his/her own key thus no key to have to  
transmit, no key to intercept.

________________________________________________________________________
Scott Cunningham \ We're the NSA                                        \
Username: flagg  \ So your the ones I hear on the other end of my phone \
                 \ No, that's the FBI                                   \
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Why not just go buy an HP-48 and replace the chip with your own chip
    that has everything you want.  C'mon you need to watch more 007
    movies ...

Because only techno geeks carry around HP-48's and techno geeks are
automatically suspicious characters.  Also, if by "replace the chip"
you mean "replace the processor", it means you are carrying around
a modified calculator, which is *really* suspicious.  If you just
program the encryption into the HP48, that means you're carrying
around an HP48 with a crypto program, which is incriminating if
they've captured a similar unit from another spy. 

You want to use an unmodified, non-fancy, non-techno-geek, consumer
calculator identical to those used by millions of innocent people.

Book ciphers can and have been broken.  William Friedman broke
one in the 1930s without even knowing what book had been used!

Before proposing cipher schemes, everyone should have completed
the assigned required reading of David Kahn's, The Codebreakers.
While the book is somewhat dated (it predates the declassification
of the Ultra work in WWII), it is an excellent history of 
cryptography from ancient times up until (nearly) today.  Be
sure to read the hardcover edition.  The paperback edition
was severely abridged.  The book should be available in
any good library.

In article <PHR.92Sep30185509@napa.telebit.com> phr@telebit.com (Paul Rubin) writes:
>would be pretty incriminating).  As a modern day alternative, I've
>often thought the No Such Agency could do the following:
>
>   - write encryption/decryption code that runs in an embedded
>     micro of the kind found in calculators.
>
>   - go to favorite defense contractor that also makes calculators
>     (e.g. TI), and say "we want you to make a new model of simple,
>     consumer calculator, priced so lots of people will buy them
>     (here's some $$$ to make it profitable), and by the way, when
>     the user types this undocumented 20-keystroke sequence, it should
>     run this code that we'll supply (from previous step).
>
>   - The calculator goes on the market and becomes popular, so
>     the spy can carry one without drawing suspicion.  The special
>     key sequence is made long enough and weird enough that no one
>     will ever enter it by accident.  Of course, hitting clear
>     in this mode reverts it to a normal calculator, in case 
>     someone walks in on the spy (see Follett's "Eye of the Needle").

Why not just go buy an HP-48 and replace the chip with your own chip
that has everything you want.  C'mon you need to watch more 007
movies ...

-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Luis P. Caamano                    |         lpc@dickens.com
Dickens Data Systems, Inc.         |         uunet!dickens.com!lpc
Atlanta, GA                        |         (404) 475-8860
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
If I think I know it all, I'll stop learning. -myself
The more I learn, the more I know I know nothing. -somebody else

In article <1992Oct1.042050.1180@unlv.edu> flagg@blind-lemon.cs.unlv.edu (Scott Cunningham) writes:
>In article <66926@cup.portal.com> Christopher_C_Lapp@cup.portal.com  
>writes:
> "How about a cryptosystem that used the teachings of various
> "religious figures in the Bible as its key?
> "he/she would assign a "long beep" to sins in the bible, and a
> "short beep" to those that weren't. By using the bible as the key, we
> "could have uncrackable, undetectable, and public key encryption.
> "Any comments?
> "Chris Lapp
>
>Why not use another more obscure text and do the same thing.  For example  
>use a different pulp romance novel each time and associate your sins with  
>those which actually occured in the book used.  This is by no means  
>uncrackable, just real obscure.  It breaks down when you have to tell your  
>partner what book to use, if someone were to find out they would have your  
>code down cold in minutes.  The way around this is to use an encryption  
>like RSA where each person has his/her own key thus no key to have to  
>transmit, no key to intercept.

The problem with using some more obscure text is that the men wearing
dark suits are more likely to get suspicious if they notice that there's
several hundred people carrying around the same Harlequin romance.  With
the Bible, if the spy is a traveller, he wouldn't even have to carry one,
since most hotels have one in the bedside drawer (and for standardization
purposes, it might be wise to go with the "Gideon" standard of the NASB
Bible, which is the one in the hotels).

Another possibility would be for the spies to choose something based on
the #1 bestseller of the week (or maybe #2).  Nobody is surprised at the 
airport if they see someone carrying the latest Clancy book onto the 
plane...  it wouldn't be a bestseller if there weren't lots of people
that bought the book!  (Flames about the ways ``bestsellers'' are chosen
by the media will be cheerfully ignored ;-)

-- 
Christopher Browne
cbbrowne@csi.uottawa.ca
University of Ottawa
Master of System Science Program

Sorry if this is a bit off-topic, but...

In <PHR.92Sep30185509@napa.telebit.com> phr@telebit.com writes:

>...
>  One advantage of the Bible is that, at least until recent times, carrying
>  one wouldn't draw suspicion to the spy.  (Carrying a Hagelin machine
>  would be pretty incriminating).  As a modern day alternative, I've
>  often thought the No Such Agency could do the following:
>  
>     - write encryption/decryption code that runs in an embedded
>       micro of the kind found in calculators.
>  
>     - go to favorite defense contractor that also makes calculators
>       (e.g. TI), and say "we want you to make a new model of simple,
>       consumer calculator, priced so lots of people will buy them
>       (here's some $$$ to make it profitable), and by the way, when
>       the user types this undocumented 20-keystroke sequence, it should
>       run this code that we'll supply (from previous step).

This reminds me of my first scientific pocket calculator I used in
high school. (It was manufactured by Casio but I know the way TI
calculators suck and I surely can imagine a TI with such features too
;-)

It was a (then) highly pouplar model called fx85, which was slightly
cheaper than the fx100, which looked exactly the same, except that a
third (blue) layer of key definitions (apart from first (black) and
second (brown) functions) was missing from the 85. Knowing a bit about
mathematics you would have recognized the blue functions as
statistical functions. 

Both of the calculators had an INV key (some sort of a shift) and a
MODE key (for switching from degrees to radians). Pressing BOTH of
them would result in switching the machine into SD (statistical) mode,
in which the third function layer was in effect and, of course, some
keys had total different meanings.

The manual of the 85 stated that [paraphrased] 'some wrong input may
cause an ERROR sign to appear, in which case you should turn the
machine off and on again.' It turned out that the condition for
getting an ERROR was exactly INV-MODE, and the same could be used to
turn the ERROR off again.

Now, some people had the 100 model, and quickly we found out that
except for the nasty ERROR display instead of SD, the statistical
functions did work as well on the 85. The two models had the same CPU,
only the displays and key labels were different.

Now don't tell me that there are no pocket calculators with surprising
undocumented features :-)

MfG,
        Olaf
-- 
    o     Olaf Titz - comp.sc.student - univ of karlsruhe - germany
 _ /<_    s_titz@iravcl.ira.uka.de - uknf@dkauni2.bitnet - praetorius@irc
(_)>(_)   +49-721-60439 - did i forget something?
Wichtig ist, was hinten rauskommt. - Helmut Kohl

In <PHR.92Sep30185509@napa.telebit.com> phr@telebit.com writes:

> >  I've often thought the No Such Agency could do the following:
> > 
> >    - write encryption/decryption code that runs in an embedded
> >      micro of the kind found in calculators.
> > 
> >    - go to favorite defense contractor that also makes calculators
> >      (e.g. TI), and say "we want you to make a new model of simple,
> >      consumer calculator, priced so lots of people will buy them
> >      (here's some $$$ to make it profitable), and by the way, when
> >      the user types this undocumented 20-keystroke sequence, it should
> >      run this code that we'll supply (from previous step).

There's a commercial product from Racal which actually functions as a pocket
calculator until you activate it with your secret code. It will then work
out one-time passwords to let you into a system.

But the funniest covert function I came across was in one of the Olivetti
2000 series ATMs. There was a long keystroke sequence which would cause a
`test dispense', ie spit out 10 banknotes without your having to put in a
card or anything tedious like that.

One large, ponderous and bureaucratic banking organisation duly recorded
this fact in their branch operations manual. Nothing happened for three years
and then suddenly all the Olivetti ATMs in a particular town started going
out of balance. 

Ross