cryptography faq other miscellany archive name cryptography faq part last modified faq for sci crypt part other miscellany this is the ninth of ten parts of the sci crypt faq the parts are mostly independent but you should read the first part before the rest we don t have the time to send out missing parts by mail so don t ask notes such as kah refer to the reference list in the last part the sections of this faq are available via anonymous ftp to rtfm mit edu as pub usenet news answers cryptography faq part xx the cryptography faq is posted to the newsgroups sci crypt sci answers and news answers every days contents what is the national security agency nsa what are the us export regulations what is tempest what are the beale ciphers and are they a hoax what is the american cryptogram association and how do i get in touch is rsa patented what about the voynich manuscript what is the national security agency nsa the nsa is the official security body of the u s government it was given its charter by president truman in the late s and has continued research in cryptology till the present the nsa is known to be the largest employer of mathematicians in the world and is also the largest purchaser of computer hardware in the world governments in general have always been prime employers of cryptologists the nsa probably possesses cryptographic expertise many years ahead of the public state of the art and can undoubtedly break many of the systems used in practice but for reasons of national security almost all information about the nsa is classified bamford s book bamfd gives a history of the people and operations of the nsa the following quote from massey mas highlights the difference between public and private research in cryptography if one regards cryptology as the prerogative of government one accepts that most cryptologic research will be conducted behind closed doors without doubt the number of workers engaged today in such secret research in cryptology far exceeds that of those engaged in open research in cryptology for only about years has there in fact been widespread open research in cryptology there have been and will continue to be conflicts between these two research communities open research is common quest for knowledge that depends for its vitality on the open exchange of ideas via conference presentations and publications in scholarly journals but can a government agency charged with responsibilities of breaking the ciphers of other nations countenance the publication of a cipher that it cannot break can a researcher in good conscience publish such a cipher that might undermine the effectiveness of his own government s code breakers one might argue that publication of a provably secure cipher would force all governments to behave like stimson s gentlemen but one must be aware that open research in cryptography is fraught with political and ethical considerations of a severity than in most scientific fields the wonder is not that some conflicts have occurred between government agencies and open researchers in cryptology but rather that these conflicts at least those of which we are aware have been so few and so mild what are the us export regulations in a nutshell there are two government agencies which control export of encryption software one is the bureau of export administration bxa in the department of commerce authorized by the export administration regulations ear another is the office of defense trade controls dtc in the state department authorized by the international traffic in arms regulations itar as a rule of thumb bxa which works with cocom has less stringent requirements but dtc which takes orders from nsa wants to see everything first and can refuse to transfer jurisdiction to bxa the newsgroup misc legal computing carries many interesting discussions on the laws surrounding cryptographic export what people think about those laws and many other complex issues which go beyond the scope of technical groups like sci crypt make sure to consult your lawyer before doing anything which will get you thrown in jail if you are lucky your lawyer might know a lawyer who has at least heard of the itar what is tempest tempest is a standard for electromagnetic shielding for computer equipment it was created in response to the discovery that information can be read from computer radiation e g from a crt at quite a distance and with little effort needless to say encryption doesn t do much good if the cleartext is available this way what are the beale ciphers and are they a hoax thanks to jim gillogly for this information and john king for corrections the story in a pamphlet by j b ward goes thomas jefferson beale and a party of adventurers accumulated a huge mass of treasure and buried it in bedford county virginia leaving three ciphers with an innkeeper the ciphers describe the location contents and intended beneficiaries of the treasure ward gives a decryption of the second cipher contents called b it was encrypted as a book cipher using the initial letters of the declaration of independence doi as key b and b are unsolved many documents have been tried as the key to b aficionados can join a group that attempts to solve b by various means with an eye toward splitting the treasure the beale cypher association p o box beaver falls pa you can get the ciphers from the rec puzzles faql by including the line send index in a message to netlib peregrine com and following the directions there are apparently several different versions of the cipher floating around the correct version is based on the pamphlet says john king kingj hpcc corp hp com some believe the story is a hoax kruh kru gives a long list of problems with the story gillogly gil decrypted b with the doi and found some unexpected strings including abfdefghiijklmmnohpp hammer president of the beale cypher association agrees that this string couldn t appear by chance but feels there must be an explanation gwyn sci crypt expert is unimpressed with this string what is the american cryptogram association and how do i get in touch the aca is an organization devoted to cryptography with an emphasis on cryptanalysis of systems that can be attacked either with pencil and paper or computers its organ the cryptogram includes articles and challenge ciphers among the more than cipher types in english and other languages are simple substitution playfair vigenere bifid bazeries grille homophonic and cryptarithm dues are for one year issues more outside of north america less for students under and seniors subscriptions should be sent to aca treasurer west hickory st mundelein il is rsa patented yes the patent number is filed granted for further discussion of this patent whether it should have been granted algorithm patents in general and related legal and moral issues see comp patents and misc legal computing for information about the league for programming freedom see ftppf note that one of the original purposes of comp patents was to collect questions such as should rsa be patented which often flooded sci crypt and other technical newsgroups into a more appropriate forum what about the voynich manuscript nelson reed edu nelson minar says there is a mailing list on the subject the address to write to subscribe to the vms mailing list is voynich request rand org the ftp archive is rand org pub voynich there s all sorts of information about the manuscript itself of course a good bibliography can be found on the ftp site kahn s the codebreakers gives a good introduction
