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Don Alvarez wrote
Now, I have enough faith in the NSA's skills to trust that you can't pass the
message to the user without also passing the escrow field, but I'd like to
see that in writing.
That is certainly the intent.
First, who knows F? If the cop on the street knows F then it quickly
becomes so widely known that everyone knows it and you might as well send
the serial number in the clear. Ergo only the escrow agents know F.
F is embedded in every Clipper Chip, but like other chip keys, unknown to the
people who use them. Only law enforcement will have a decoder box that allows
the law enforcement field to be decrypted. Initially, there will be just one
box, and it will be operated by the FBI.
Second, what information does law enforcement get from the
escrow agents? Ideally, law enforcement only gets K, the
session key governing the conversation for which they have a
court order. Unfortunately, in order for law enforcement to
get *only* K (and not U), the escrow agents must get together
and secretly combine U1 and U2 so that they can unwrap K and
give it to law enforcement. But then the escrow agents would
also know K, and they would be able to decrypt messages
themselves. That's just a very short step away from the
omniscient big-brother which the multiple-escrower scheme was
designed to prevent. The escrow agents must not allowed to
exchange keys with each other. Ergo, law enforcement must
assemble U itself in order to find out K. This means that law
enforcement now knows the key to unlock every session key ever
used on this phone.
It is imperative that law enforcement get U. If they are tapping a line,
there may be dozens of calls on that line per day. It would be totally
impractical to have to go to the escrow agents to get the session key for each
call. It would be impossible to do real-time decryption under that
constraint.
Things are starting to look bad, but what about F? We never
really figured out what F was for, we just said that only the
escrow agents know F. Well, now we know what F is for. Even
if law enforcement knows U, they still can't read messages
without court orders, because they can't obtain E[K;U] without
knowing F, and only escrow knows F.
For the same reason as above, it is imperative that law enforcement be able to
decode the law enforcement field in order to obtain E[K; U] and then decrypt
this to get K. It is completely impractical to go the escrow agents for each
conversation.
Steve Holzworth wrote:
I don't claim to be up on crypto, but it seems to me that once
the "authorized tap" has been performed once, the agency in
question now has a copy of the desired keys. They can use these
keys at ANY time in the future to decrypt communications
between these two parties (without having to go through the
After a tap has been completed, government attorneys are required to notify
the subjects of the electronic surveillance. At that point, the subjects are
certainly free to purchase a new device with a new chip, or perhaps the
vendors could simply replace the chip.
I have one outstanding question that I haven't seen asked yet. Is there a
time component in the encryption key? Since wiretaps are presumably
authorized for certain time periods with both start and end dates, it should
not be possible to decrypt an illegally monitored message.
I am unaware of any time component. Current wiretap laws protect against
this. Evidence collected after the warrant has expired can be thrown out in
court. In addition, it is illegal for the service provider to implement an
intercept after a warrant has expired. With the new technologies, law
enforcers will be incapable of executing a tap without the assistance of the
service provider.
Lars-Henrik Eriksson has written
If the algorithm was made public, any weaknesses would be discovered
in time. If it is classified, weaknesses may never be known, or known
only to the parties who have access to the classified information.
The NSA has a long record of success with crypto, far better than any
individual or organization in the public community. In addition, there are
plans to bring in expert cryptographers to assess the algorithm.
Dave Weingart wrote:
It appears ... that two encryption devices, when they initiate
a session, must exchange keys in order to decrypt each others
messages. Great, but here's my question...what's to stop
someone at machine B (who's talking to machine A) from
"recording" the key from machine A when the session is
started? Since it appears that the key is constant for each
chip, machine B can now _always_ decrypt machine A's messages.
The unit keys that are embedded in the chips are not exchanged. Instead,
machines A and B negotiate a session key K that is used only for that
particular conversation.
Jim Sims wrote:
Seems a whole lot easier to just catch the key K during the
negotiation between the boxes....
It is possible for both ends to negotiate a session key K without transmitting
any secret information at all, including K. One way of doing this is with a
public-key distribution method. The Diffie-Hellman method works as follows.
Machine A picks a secret value xa, and machine B picks xb. A sends the public
value ya = g^xa mod p to B and B sends yb = g^xb mod p to A, where p is a huge
prime and g is a global constant. Then A computes the session key K = yb^xa
mod p = g^xbxa mod p, and B computes K = ya^xb mod p = g^xaxb mod p. Both K's
are the same. An eavesdropper sees ya and yb, but since xa and xb are not
known, cannot compute K. For more information about key exchange, see for
example my book "Cryptography and Data Security" or some other crypto text.
Dorothy Denning denning@cs.georgetown.edu
[There were enough additional messages for several more issues,
some raising points already covered by the above message. I have
somewhat arbitrarily selected a representative few for the rest of
this issue, trying to avoid duplication where possible. There may
be another issue or two yet to come out of the existing backlog.
PLEASE pardon some of the duplication. It is virtually impossible
for me to selectively choose a few nonoverlapping paragraphs from each
message. For those of you who wonder whether RISKS has been taken over
by this discussion, there has been essentially no other topic of concern
for the past week, although something may be brewing in the recent
near-fatal aircraft autopilot failure attributed to software. PGN]
Mr. President: I am concerned that your proposal fails to address the following issues, among others: 1. Will American companies have to manufacture different lines of products according to the market (US vs. foreign--assuming that they wouldn't be allowed to export the Clipper Chip) ? 2. Will foreign companies be excluded from the American market since they won't have access to the Clipper Chip ? 3. If the technology is ever sold to other countries (foreign governments), how will the US be sure that no foreign government develops the ability to tap American communications, and how will international communications be secure (remember that the two escrow "agencies" are to be located in the US, a seemingly unacceptable proposition for non-American entities) ? 4. What guarantee is there that other encryption schemes will not be outlawed in the future? In particular, what guarantee is there that the right retained by the people to privacy will not be ever more violated by the US government in the future? Will use of other, private, secret encryption become a crime? 5. What guarantee is there that criminals will use the Clipper Chip, knowing that the US government has the ability to decrypt their communications? Isn't it probable that such criminals will resort to publically available encryption systems that they would know are secure from the US government? 6. Since the secrecy of the algorithm seems to be essential, how does your proposal compare to the strength of currently available non-secret algorithms? It is well known in Computer Science that reliance on the ignorance of an enemy party is the worst protection imaginable, since it is a very weak link in the chain of safety. 7. An American hero once said something to the effect that those who are willing to trade liberty for safety deserve neither. Don't you think you are asking the American people to trade liberty (their right to privacy) in exchange for an elusive safety (listening to suspected criminals, if these criminals buy the government's chip)? 8. How is it justifiable to ask the American people that they spend money (for the Clipper Chip) in order to let the government listen on them? Given the current state of the economy, is it even possible? 9. Finally, what constitutional article gives you the power to violate the privacy of the American people? Didn't you swear to uphold the US constitution? Sincerely, Magnus Kempe Software Engineering Lab, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, DI-LGL / EPFL, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland +41-21 693 2580 Magnus.Kempe@di.epfl.ch
The summary isn't very specific, but it sounds like the message stream is
transmitted first, followed by the escrow field. Surely this can't be the
case, because all one needs to do is hang up at the appropriate point in the
call and prevent the transmission of the escrow field...
One way of solving this "problem" is to have the escrow block consist of:
E[{E[K ; U],N,SHA[{E[K ; U],N}]} ; F]
Where SHA[] represents the Secure Hash Algorithm (in the Capstone
Chip), though frankly a CRC32 would probably do just as well. The
receiving Clipper can then decrypt each received law enforcement block
and verify that the SHA hash of the contents match the supplied hash.
If they fail, the chip ceases to perform any decryption operations on
behalf of the user. Perhaps other information could be included in
the encryption under "F" to make it difficult to supply a law
enforcement block from another prior conversation. This could well be
a detail that was left out of the explanation given to Dorothy.
Btw. I will go on record as being opposed to this entire proposal. My
interpretation of the Constitution (and the Bill of Rights) on this issue is
that the 4th amendment (no search and seizure without a warrant) was intended
to place limitations on the right of the government to interfere with the
people. It is being twisted around by some to imply that we the people never
had the right to privacy in the first place, when a warrant was issued. As
others have mentioned here, I have a real concern that a VOLUNTARY program
today will turn into a mandatory program tomorrow. In my nightmares I envision
an agent of (pick your favorite large, secretive, government agency) telling
Congress:
"Yes Senator, but we gave the American Public privacy five year's ago with the
Clipper program. They still have that privacy today. However some miscreants
in our society... drug dealers and whatnot are still using non-Clipper
unbreakable encryption and we must put a stop to this..."
-Jeff
Short Synopsis: "We're from the government. We're here to help...." Long Synopsis: "No, no, no. Don't use those regular old encryption devices; if everyone uses them, then criminals will use them, too. And if criminals use them, Big Brother won't be able to protect you from all those nasty deals they make over the phone. It just makes the work of protecting you poor lost sheep that much harder. "Here, Big Brother will make things all better, but in order for it to work, you need to use this handy dandy NEW encryption algorithm that HE designed. He even put it on a chip to make it easy for you to use it in all of your communication devices. He even gave it a cute name — the 'Clipper Chip'. See?! Now, since Big Brother will know how to decode the messages, He'll be able to listen in on the conversations of all of those yucky bad guys so He can put them in jail and make things all better. "Could we listen in on your conversations too? Well, yes, but we would never dream of infringing on innocent peoples' rights to privacy. That would be a crime and Big Brother doesn't commit crimes. He loves you all and would never do anything to hurt you. Most of all, he just wants to protect you from those terrible, terrible, drug dealers. That's all he would ever use the Clipper Chip for. Isn't that swell of Him?" Daren Stebner stebnerd@wl.aecl.ca
A few things have occurred to me as I've read the announcements and the initial reactions. Each chip contains and broadcasts the serial number. To be frank, if they don't use a lot of different family keys, then that number is going to be rather public, rather quickly. Legally, what is this going to do to wiretaps? If I have recorded a conversation, have I tapped it? Or have I only tapped it when I decrypt it? This could lead to recording lots of conversations, and then only getting the keys and actually "tapping" once I get someone for something criminal. A change to the law or court ruling could establish this. For now, they need permission up front (with exceptions, noted below), but I could see that changing. Doesn't the manufacturer need to give the keys to the escrow agencies? With the serial number? Am I missing something, or is there a RISK of the manufacturer becoming compromised? The other thing is that companies are going to be using this for international calls. And, calls in other countries. I'm sure most of you have noticed that agencies of the US Government tend not to follow the procedural niceties that they at least have to give lip service to here when dealing with communications elsewhere. If the CIA or NSA decides they want a tap, can they get the keys for a unit in another country without a court order, by saying "it's for national security" three times and throwing a rock in the air? Besides, the NSA gets really itchy if they can't just monitor international calls whenever they want. So, what are they going to do — record the call data and decrypt it later if they need to? They don't need specific authorization now to tap and record international calls. I can't see that changing. What I read in one of the gov't documents implied that the A.G. was responsible for defining some sort of reasonable authorization. Why do I have a feeling that "national security" is going to come up a lot? Especially since there has been an increase in cold-war style rhetoric in reference to *economic* competition? Regarding profitable technologies as national security concerns for the sake of economic competition is a scary thing. And this chip plays right into that desire for control. As other people have pointed out, once they've got your key, they've got your key. If someone gets it for national security reasons, then you might just be out of luck. Paul Coen, Drew University Academic Computing pcoen@drunivac.drew.edu
Thoughts on the Clipper Chip: 1) One of the selling points of the Clipper chip is that US companies will be able to use it to effect secure communication between their home offices and branches in foreign countries. In particular, it is implied that it is the governments of those foreign countries that will be thwarted in their attempts to listen in to the corporate secrets of America. Now why would any "friendly" foreign government (e.g. Canada, France, New Zealand) imaginably permit Clipper to be used on its territory unless it too has access to the keys for "law enforcement purposes" ? So if XYZ Corp. wants to talk in private with its French subsidiary XYZ France, SA., the French government will want access to the escrow agents so that it too can present a court order (according to French law, of course) and be given XYZ's key, if it suspects wrongdoing on the part of XYZ France. But this clearly won't do. The US escrow agents will presumably be subject to US law and might be able to refuse a French court order on some US constitutional grounds. So the French will have to have their own pair of agents, and - since there is no advance control of which chips will end up in France - these French agents will have to have the complete list of all keys. Now multiply this by a dozen or so friendly countries, with an equal number of different legal systems and constitutions... 2) Presumably the reason for keeping the algorithms secret is to prevent competitive manufacture of chips (or software) that can communicate with Clippers from being produced. (Such competitors might somehow forget to send their key lists to the escrow agents.) I know almost nothing of the technology, but it seems far fetched to me that a chip can be manufactured that *absolutely, positively* cannot be reverse engineered, or at least satisfies something analogous to being computationally infeasible to reverse engineer. There was no mention of quantum effects, but I know of no other way to even begin to make something that can't be examined with appropriate probes. I hope some hardware experts will say something on this topic. Or is it that the hardware design can be reverse engineered, but the algorithms themselves are one-way encrypted ? 3) It is not clear to me how tapping of bidirectional communications works. If the police have a court order to tap the phone of suspected criminal X, and they find that he is holding a Clipper-encrypted conversation with previously unknown person Y, will they be able to decrypt only what X says if they have only X's key from escrow ? Or will they automatically apply for Y's key too, on the grounds that he is an associate of X ? Ordinary analogue phones (and networks) echo a small amount of the received signal to the sender, but an encrypting phone will have digitized and encrypted the signal before it gets echoed (even if there is a modem and analogue circuit in the loop). Tony Harminc, Apios Systems Toronto, tony@vm1.mcgill.ca
With all of the sound and fury surrounding the announcement, I think a few
things have been missed. First, no-one has said that Clipper is going to
replace the STU-III or the Lockheed Encrypting Modem (just passed up an
opportunity to buy a couple for $25 - only 1200 baud) or all of the other
devices that exist. Elements of the Norton Utilities and PKZIP would also have
to be outlawed. The "user selected table" in UUENCODE would be right out.
Second, prohibition of double encryption using Clipper as one stage would be
impossible to enforce through sheer mass. Comes under the same category
as strict enforcement of the speed limit.
So what is Clipper ? IMHO it will be a low-cost way to provide *reasonable*
protection for routine traffic that up until now has been unprotected.
Cellular telephony is the obvious first use to reduce the billion-dollar
fraud situation. Transmittal of medical records, legal records, credit
reports is another. Privacy laws state that these must be protected.
Clipper provides a legal remedy that has been lacking.
Telecommuting is another major problem for most companies who have been back
through fear of unautorized interception. Clipper will provide a "warm and
fuzzy" feeling with low-cost encrypting modems.
IMHO, Clipper must meet the "good enough" test. Clipper *will* meet the "good
enough" test because the designers are not stupid and it would be a major
*political* embarrassment should it prove to be easily broken, we just do not
know all of the facts yet.
Technically, I can make a guess and say that little of what we have seen
as yet is correct. For instance if the Message Key (K) is only 30 bits
long and the message is encrypted E(M;K) as mentioned several times,
a massive attack with existing technology that is not particularly
expen$ive would yield a solution in under a minute. (Hint: check out
DSPs). Therefore the message is not encrypted E(M;K).
Further, there is a Family Key (F) and a Unit Key (U) in each chip. The
only link to these is the serial number therefore I *suspect* that the
serial number will be sent en clair as part of the header. It would be
possible to use only selected Family Keys and create E(s/n;F) such that
it would easily yield the s/n but why (more later).
So most likely we will have a message key that will be a predetermined
function of K,U,&F (FN1). The header might consist of the serial number,
followed by an encrypted function of K,U,& F (FN2) that is different from
(MK), then the message encrypted with MK.
Before engaging Clipper, both FN1 and FN2 would have to be exchanged.
On starting communication, the header would consist of the serial number,
followed by FN2, followed by E(M;FN1). To the receiving Clipper, the
serial number would act as a "wake up". Since the chip would have K,U, & F
it would then reverse FN2 and create FN1 and decode the message. A longer
header could accommodate conference calling. This removes any incentive
to spoof the s/n since the receiving chip will assume it is for someone
else. (Exercise is left to the student).
A "promiscuous" chip might be designed but it would have to have all
U and F keys (of course the total number issued is probably going to be
less than the number of ZIP codes so this *is* a danger point...).
The "key master" would hold one element say the s/n,U function, the
"gatekeeper" s/n,F. On proper application each would contribute its part
but the requesting authority would receive only FN1, not the means to
recreate it. Alternately, the requesting authority might receive a
duplicate Clipper chip but not the Keys - this protects the keys from
disclosure *and* provides physical traceability of the duplicate Clipper.
On completion of the tap authorization, the duplicate must be destroyed.
Certainly, there are still some things to be worked out but these are
technical details. IMHO we *need* a cheap means of "good enough" encryption,
something that can be built into modems and cell phones at a disposable
cost. We *need* a workable Clipper, and the government has more to lose
in providing a flawed product than we do.
Padgett
One thing (among several) that disturbs me about the Clipper Chip is the release of the decryption key to law enforcement bodies, who have various legal maneuverings to circumvent ever notifying the tappee, after the wiretap has completed, that their key has been compromised. The key, originally safeguarded by the key escrow bank, is now additionally held by unknown and unaudited persons within law enforcement. History has shown that the law enforcement community has not been above using information gained during illegal wiretaps... Once they have the key, they have access forever to your conversations. And, supposing that one is actually notified that they were being wiretapped, and thus need a new key. Will the agency responsible for the tap pay any costs for obtaining new keys? Further, the information packet provided by Mat Heyman's office fails to address the question of using non-clipper chip encryption. They call their technology "more secure than many other voice encryption systems readily available" — admitting that more secure systems are available. Why should anyone believe they do not intend to make illegal competing methods of encryption? andrew mossberg, systems specialist, symbiosis corporation, miami, florida 33166-6202 (305) 597-4110 fax (305) 597-4002 aem@symbiosis.ahp.com
In some of the recent comments on the RISKS of Clipper, it would seem that the commentators are ignoring the results of including omnivorous recording. It is well known that it is possible to record a substantial amount of traffic for archival storage and later analysis. Such recording is not prevented by any encryption scheme, whether keys are escrowed or not. The resulting RISK of this assumption is that we may erode away the notion that pure recording is a violation of privacy (today's wiretap law prevents recording conversations without a warrant). What could be wrong with law enforcers or others recording everything, now that it is masked by encryption? Surely this is NOT a violation of privacy because you can't read it. I'd bet that such recordings and archival would be authorized by most governmental lawyers as NOT violating privacy on this basis. But in fact, with key escrow, someone on a fishing expedition could in principle recover all past history from an archival database. I think that the design of Clipper protocols is actually more suitable for ex-post-facto decryption of recorded conversations, rather than for getting access to not-yet-happening transactions. So the notion that we might be moving to a world where recording is real would make sense. I also notice that the protocol for selecting conversation keys requires an online conversation — thus one cannot use Clipper for leaving secure voice mail in a voice mail box, as far as I can tell. Similarly, conference calling, etc. need to be considered in the design of secure phones. If conference calling services (such as AT&T's service) require that the security devices be turned off or compromised, there is a risk that users will be deceived about their level of security. My point, then, is that issues related to recording seem to have been poorly considered in this proposal. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I'd like to understand this better, in the context of societal impacts that may result. David P. Reed, Interval Research Corporation, 1801-C Page Mill Road Palo Alto, CA 94304
An amazing amount of discussion and speculation has been generated by the
clipper chip announcement. Special thanks to Dorothy Denning for her summary,
and kudos to Don Alvarez for asking good questions. But I have yet to see
anyone ask (or answer) the obvious question:
Will the various government agencies be using the clipper chip?
If so, I heartily endorse the policy. It guarantees that government messages
cannot be ultimately secret from the governed. It seems to me that the private
sector will continue to use whatever encryption is appropriate for their needs,
(even should laws to the contrary be passed,) and that the only agencies
obliged live with the consequences are those of the government itself.
--Bob
bebert.osbu_north@xerox.com -or- ebert@xsoft.xerox.com -or- (415) 813-7579
-or- XSoft/Xerox Corp. 3400 Hillview Ave. M/S PAHV203 Palo Alto, CA 94303
I guess someone should mention the existence of a new newsgroup alt.privacy.clipper . Might as well be me. -Jon
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