Re: Allegations regarding OpenBSD IPSEC

[malfy <malfy () nophop net>]

On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 08:45:13AM -0500, Valdis.Kletnieks () vt edu wrote:
> On Thu, 16 Dec 2010 23:26:25 +1100, Abuse007 said:
>
> > Changing the s-boxes in DES (and therefore Triple DES as well) would break
> > comparability with other implementations as it would no longer decrypt the same
> > as a standard implementation.
>
> Not if you managed to tweak the s-boxes while DES was still being designed.
>
> It's been known for years that while IBM was designing DES, they had some talks
> with the NSA, and the rumor was that NSA convinced them to tweak the s-boxes to
> allow a backdoor.  Recently, it was revealed that the NSA *did* give advice
> about the S-boxes, but it was because the IBM guys had independently come up
> with the concept of differential cryptanalysis, which the NSA knew about but
> nobody else did at that time.  So NSA gave IBM some hints how to design the
> s-boxes to harden it against differential cryptanalysis.
>
> Or so they said. :)

There are no cryptographic S-Box backdoors in AES, I haven't verified
this myself, it's on the agenda, but there have been many comb searches
through the DES algorithm.

~malfy

-- 
"Wisdom begins in wonder"
    -Socrates
I don't read unencrypted mail
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