IP: Follow Up on Clipper Reverse Engineering

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

As sent to me from a reliable IPer. Please note this is quoted and NOT
mine. djf


> Per the heads-up... FYI, Intel did the reverse engineering job on
> Clipper and had the DOD classify it out from under them. So much for
> FOI. What the feds COULDN'T do anything about is the reverse that was
> done recently in two places, Bulgaria and Canada. As a matter of
> interest, both reversing shops stem from the same roots, DZU (Bulgaria).
> A shop they put together years ago in British Columbia does reversing
> jobs for anyone with money, but they worked with their Bulgarian
> associates on this one, the sponsor for which is unknown (at least to me
> at this time--although I suspect a back door Israeli connection). The
> shop in Stara Zagora (stä´re ze-gôr´), with which Dan Dooley and I are
> intimately familiar (remember the late Kalok disk drive fiasco?), does
> reversing and other stuff for their former masters and others with
> money.
>
> This city in central Bulgaria east-northeast of Plovdiv is a hotbed for
> this kind of stuff and, in my first-hand experience, they have top notch
> people (hungry out of work PhDs can do wonders). They sure surprised me
> with what they had done in the reversing and disk drive businesses.
> Maybe that's a Caritas trip for you some day. Stara Zagora is a
> significant railroad hub. Yuk, Yuk.
>
> Burn this before reading (as if I have any real secrets, and if I did
> they would be consigned to the tender ministrations of PGP configured
> for using the IDEA cipher). Whoever is listening out there, "this is
> well-know, public domain, info", so go away before you get here!