re revised technical summary of clipper chip in article apr guvax acc georgetown edu denning guvax acc georgetown edu writes the chips are programmed by mykotronx inc which calls them the myk the silicon is supplied by vlsi technology inc they are implemented in micron technology and will initially sell for about each in quantities of or more the price should drop as the technology is shrunk to micron hmmmmmm seems a bit expensive how big is the chip what kind of packages will be used volt or volt technology how much current will it draw i think there are many practical questions that haven t been answered especially since this chip already exists all clipper chips are programmed inside a scif secure compartmented information facility which is essentially a vault the scif contains a laptop computer and equipment to program the chips about chips are programmed during a single session the scif is located at mykotronx at the beginning of a session a trusted agent from each of the two key escrow agencies enters the vault agent enters a secret random bit value s into the laptop and agent enters a secret random bit value s these random values serve as seeds to generate unit keys for a sequence of serial numbers thus the unit keys are a function of secret random bits where each agent knows only ok i ve got a big problem with all of this how in the world do you expect to sell these chips for even after all the overhead involved in this programming procedure people a laptop only chips at a time give me a break and how long does all of this take even if it is a minute per chip it will take the greater part of a day to turn out of these things how long do you suppose it will take to program those chips mentioned above this is highly impractical to see how the chip is used imagine that it is embedded in the at t telephone security device as it will be suppose i call someone and we both have such a device after pushing a button to start a secure conversation my security device will negotiate an bit session key k with the device at the other end so where can i find info on this at t device what kind of vocoder does it use does it require isdn phone lines if not is it full duplex how does it sound what kind of synchronization scheme is used will all other little black boxes have to conform to at ts choices of protocol etc will anybody else be allowed to build boxes that conform to these specifications doug bank private systems division dougb ecs comm mot com motorola communications sector dougb nwu edu schaumburg illinois dougb casbah acns nwu edu
