re screw the people crypto is for hard core hackers spooks only in article almaden ibm com ameline vnet ibm com ian ameline writes i also believe that someone will reverse engineer the clipper chip and knowlege of the algorithm will likely be fairly widespread any back doors or weaknesses would further discredit the scheme and help grow the market demand for a secure alternative i must admit that this point has been running through my mind for most of the discussion one the dice are out there it won t be long before someone decaps it and after a bit of work has full details of the clipper algorythm this isn t trivial to do but then again it is not impossibly difficult either any half way decent vlsi design student should be able to take a photograph of a technology s he is familiar with and given a description of the input output control and supply lines figure out the function of various subsystems on the die indeed this is not an uncommon exercise performed during training because it makes you think about design decisions made by other designers i could speculate that these chips are going to be manufactured using tamperproof carriers unlikely such techniques are very expensive and this thing is supposed to be relatively cheap to produce or that there will be some legal or legislative framework to prevent publication of the algorythm unlikely please correct me if i am wrong but aren t these supposed to be sold internationally i suppose that the most likely reason the algorythm is remaining secret for the moment is that some idiot bureaucrat untrammeled by the realities of the situation decided that well we should keep it a secret because it is supposed to be secret isn t it just some random thoughts ian farquhar phone office of computing services fax macquarie university nsw also australia email ifarqhar laurel ocs mq edu au
