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phil hunt September 23rd 03 11:50 PM

(I'm not an electronic engineer, so I've cross-posted this to some
newsgroups which might be able to give informed comment on a number
of points.)

On 23 Sep 2003 05:51:41 -0700, Kevin Brooks wrote:
(phil hunt) wrote in message ...
[regarding battlefield internet]
The signal must be such that the extended receiver can hear it. So
others can too, in principle. (Though detecting the signal and
knowing where it's from aren't the same thing). I'm not a radio
engineer but I can imagine a few ways how direction-finding might
work; for example place two (or 3) detectors a few meters apart
and calculate the time delay between each one receiving the signal.


No. Paul is correct, DF'ing a "frequency agile" (or "hopping")
transmitter is no easy task. For example, the standard US SINCGARS
radio changes frequencies about one hundred times per *second*,


Bear in mind that I'm talking about automated electronic gear here,
not manual intervention. Electronics works in time spans a lot
quicker than 10 ms.

over a
pretty wide band of freq's (this is why synchronization of the radios
on a time basis is critical to succesful operation of the net).


So the frequency changes are pre-determined on a time basis?

If there is a radio receiver, is it better able to detect/deceive a
signal whgen it knows the frequency in advance? Or can it "sniff"
for lots of frequencies at a time and pick out what looks
interesting?

If two receivers, placed say 10 m aparet, both pick up a signal, how
accurately can the time difference between the repetion of both
signals be calculated? Light moves 30 cm in 1 ns, so if time
differences can be calculated to an accuracy of 0.1 ns, then
direction could be resolved to an accuracy of 3 cm/10 m ~= 3 mrad.

Alternately, would something like a pinhole camera work? What I mean
here is: imagine a cubic metal box, 1 m on its side, with a vertical
slit, about 1 cm wide down one of its vertical faces. On the
opposite face, there are detectors for detecting radio waves. If the
elevctromatnetic ratiation coming into the box can only go in
through the slit, and goes in a straight line, then knowing which
detectors are lit up would allow someone to tell where the
radiation was coming from. It may be that, depending on the
wavelength, the incoming radiation would be diffracted by the slit
and would get spread all over the detectors. If this is the case,
perehaps multiple slits could be used, and the diffraction pattern
would differ dependent on the angle with which the radiation strikes
the slitted face? (because the radation at each slit would be
out-of-phase with the radiation at other slits). Has anything like
this been tried?

It is
hard enough for the average "rest of the world" intel unit to DF an
old fashioned non-hopping transmitter if the radio operator uses good
RTO procedures--trying to pluck enough of these random
fractional-second bursts out of the ether to determine a direction is
more difficult by a few orders of magnitude.


What methods are used to do DF?

--
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia



phil hunt September 23rd 03 11:50 PM

battlefield Internet (was: Stryker/C-130 Pics)
 
(I'm not an electronic engineer, so I've cross-posted this to some
newsgroups which might be able to give informed comment on a number
of points.)

On 23 Sep 2003 05:51:41 -0700, Kevin Brooks wrote:
(phil hunt) wrote in message ...
[regarding battlefield internet]
The signal must be such that the extended receiver can hear it. So
others can too, in principle. (Though detecting the signal and
knowing where it's from aren't the same thing). I'm not a radio
engineer but I can imagine a few ways how direction-finding might
work; for example place two (or 3) detectors a few meters apart
and calculate the time delay between each one receiving the signal.


No. Paul is correct, DF'ing a "frequency agile" (or "hopping")
transmitter is no easy task. For example, the standard US SINCGARS
radio changes frequencies about one hundred times per *second*,


Bear in mind that I'm talking about automated electronic gear here,
not manual intervention. Electronics works in time spans a lot
quicker than 10 ms.

over a
pretty wide band of freq's (this is why synchronization of the radios
on a time basis is critical to succesful operation of the net).


So the frequency changes are pre-determined on a time basis?

If there is a radio receiver, is it better able to detect/deceive a
signal whgen it knows the frequency in advance? Or can it "sniff"
for lots of frequencies at a time and pick out what looks
interesting?

If two receivers, placed say 10 m aparet, both pick up a signal, how
accurately can the time difference between the repetion of both
signals be calculated? Light moves 30 cm in 1 ns, so if time
differences can be calculated to an accuracy of 0.1 ns, then
direction could be resolved to an accuracy of 3 cm/10 m ~= 3 mrad.

Alternately, would something like a pinhole camera work? What I mean
here is: imagine a cubic metal box, 1 m on its side, with a vertical
slit, about 1 cm wide down one of its vertical faces. On the
opposite face, there are detectors for detecting radio waves. If the
elevctromatnetic ratiation coming into the box can only go in
through the slit, and goes in a straight line, then knowing which
detectors are lit up would allow someone to tell where the
radiation was coming from. It may be that, depending on the
wavelength, the incoming radiation would be diffracted by the slit
and would get spread all over the detectors. If this is the case,
perehaps multiple slits could be used, and the diffraction pattern
would differ dependent on the angle with which the radiation strikes
the slitted face? (because the radation at each slit would be
out-of-phase with the radiation at other slits). Has anything like
this been tried?

It is
hard enough for the average "rest of the world" intel unit to DF an
old fashioned non-hopping transmitter if the radio operator uses good
RTO procedures--trying to pluck enough of these random
fractional-second bursts out of the ether to determine a direction is
more difficult by a few orders of magnitude.


What methods are used to do DF?

--
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia



Kevin Brooks September 24th 03 04:00 AM

(phil hunt) wrote in message ...
(I'm not an electronic engineer, so I've cross-posted this to some
newsgroups which might be able to give informed comment on a number
of points.)

On 23 Sep 2003 05:51:41 -0700, Kevin Brooks wrote:
(phil hunt) wrote in message ...
[regarding battlefield internet]
The signal must be such that the extended receiver can hear it. So
others can too, in principle. (Though detecting the signal and
knowing where it's from aren't the same thing). I'm not a radio
engineer but I can imagine a few ways how direction-finding might
work; for example place two (or 3) detectors a few meters apart
and calculate the time delay between each one receiving the signal.


No. Paul is correct, DF'ing a "frequency agile" (or "hopping")
transmitter is no easy task. For example, the standard US SINCGARS
radio changes frequencies about one hundred times per *second*,


Bear in mind that I'm talking about automated electronic gear here,
not manual intervention. Electronics works in time spans a lot
quicker than 10 ms.


So what? Unless you know the frequency hopping plan ahead of time
(something that is rather closely guarded), you can't capture enough
of the transmission to do you any good--they use a rather broad
spectrum.


over a
pretty wide band of freq's (this is why synchronization of the radios
on a time basis is critical to succesful operation of the net).


So the frequency changes are pre-determined on a time basis?


Yes.


If there is a radio receiver, is it better able to detect/deceive a
signal whgen it knows the frequency in advance? Or can it "sniff"
for lots of frequencies at a time and pick out what looks
interesting?


Both radios have to be loaded with the same frequency hopping (FH)
plan, and then they have to be synchronized by time. When SINGCARS
first came out the time synch had to be done by having the net control
station (NCS) perform periodic radio checks (each time your radio
"talked" to the NCS, it resynchronized to the NCS time hack); failure
to do this could result in the net "splitting", with some of your
radios on one hack, and the rest on another, meaning the two could not
talk to each other. I believe that the newer versions (known as
SINCGARS EPLRS, for enhanced precision location system) may use GPS
time data, ensuring that everyone is always on the same time scale.

Yes, you can set up to scan various nets (we did so for command post
operations where we wanted to monitor multiple nets), but they all
have to be on that same time hack, and you have to have each net's FH
plan loaded; you can't just decide to operate it like a police scanner
and listen in on whoever you choose to.


If two receivers, placed say 10 m aparet, both pick up a signal, how
accurately can the time difference between the repetion of both
signals be calculated? Light moves 30 cm in 1 ns, so if time
differences can be calculated to an accuracy of 0.1 ns, then
direction could be resolved to an accuracy of 3 cm/10 m ~= 3 mrad.


The fact is that the direction finding (DF'ing) of frequency agile
commo equipment is extremely difficult for the best of the world's
intel folks, and darned near impossible for the rest (which is most of
the rest of the world); that is why US radio procedures are a bit more
relaxed than they used to be before the advent of FH, back when we
tried to keep our transmissions to no more than five seconds at a time
with lots of "breaks" in long messages to make DF'ing more difficult.


Alternately, would something like a pinhole camera work? What I mean
here is: imagine a cubic metal box, 1 m on its side, with a vertical
slit, about 1 cm wide down one of its vertical faces. On the
opposite face, there are detectors for detecting radio waves. If the
elevctromatnetic ratiation coming into the box can only go in
through the slit, and goes in a straight line, then knowing which
detectors are lit up would allow someone to tell where the
radiation was coming from. It may be that, depending on the
wavelength, the incoming radiation would be diffracted by the slit
and would get spread all over the detectors. If this is the case,
perehaps multiple slits could be used, and the diffraction pattern
would differ dependent on the angle with which the radiation strikes
the slitted face? (because the radation at each slit would be
out-of-phase with the radiation at other slits). Has anything like
this been tried?


Hey, I just *used* the critters and was fortunate enough to attend new
equipment training from the manufacturer when we got it; suffice it to
say that use of FH makes DF'ing a remote concern, pretty much
eliminates any concern over jamming (even broad band jamming can only
take down a small percentage of the available spectrum, making voice
transmissions still very clear), and the use of FH combined with
crypto key makes it darned near impossible for the bad guy to decypher
it in any realistic timely manner.


It is
hard enough for the average "rest of the world" intel unit to DF an
old fashioned non-hopping transmitter if the radio operator uses good
RTO procedures--trying to pluck enough of these random
fractional-second bursts out of the ether to determine a direction is
more difficult by a few orders of magnitude.


What methods are used to do DF?


You'd have to find a signals intel puke to answer that one (but you
can rest assured that any really good methods/systems remain
classified).

Brooks

Kevin Brooks September 24th 03 04:00 AM

(phil hunt) wrote in message ...
(I'm not an electronic engineer, so I've cross-posted this to some
newsgroups which might be able to give informed comment on a number
of points.)

On 23 Sep 2003 05:51:41 -0700, Kevin Brooks wrote:
(phil hunt) wrote in message ...
[regarding battlefield internet]
The signal must be such that the extended receiver can hear it. So
others can too, in principle. (Though detecting the signal and
knowing where it's from aren't the same thing). I'm not a radio
engineer but I can imagine a few ways how direction-finding might
work; for example place two (or 3) detectors a few meters apart
and calculate the time delay between each one receiving the signal.


No. Paul is correct, DF'ing a "frequency agile" (or "hopping")
transmitter is no easy task. For example, the standard US SINCGARS
radio changes frequencies about one hundred times per *second*,


Bear in mind that I'm talking about automated electronic gear here,
not manual intervention. Electronics works in time spans a lot
quicker than 10 ms.


So what? Unless you know the frequency hopping plan ahead of time
(something that is rather closely guarded), you can't capture enough
of the transmission to do you any good--they use a rather broad
spectrum.


over a
pretty wide band of freq's (this is why synchronization of the radios
on a time basis is critical to succesful operation of the net).


So the frequency changes are pre-determined on a time basis?


Yes.


If there is a radio receiver, is it better able to detect/deceive a
signal whgen it knows the frequency in advance? Or can it "sniff"
for lots of frequencies at a time and pick out what looks
interesting?


Both radios have to be loaded with the same frequency hopping (FH)
plan, and then they have to be synchronized by time. When SINGCARS
first came out the time synch had to be done by having the net control
station (NCS) perform periodic radio checks (each time your radio
"talked" to the NCS, it resynchronized to the NCS time hack); failure
to do this could result in the net "splitting", with some of your
radios on one hack, and the rest on another, meaning the two could not
talk to each other. I believe that the newer versions (known as
SINCGARS EPLRS, for enhanced precision location system) may use GPS
time data, ensuring that everyone is always on the same time scale.

Yes, you can set up to scan various nets (we did so for command post
operations where we wanted to monitor multiple nets), but they all
have to be on that same time hack, and you have to have each net's FH
plan loaded; you can't just decide to operate it like a police scanner
and listen in on whoever you choose to.


If two receivers, placed say 10 m aparet, both pick up a signal, how
accurately can the time difference between the repetion of both
signals be calculated? Light moves 30 cm in 1 ns, so if time
differences can be calculated to an accuracy of 0.1 ns, then
direction could be resolved to an accuracy of 3 cm/10 m ~= 3 mrad.


The fact is that the direction finding (DF'ing) of frequency agile
commo equipment is extremely difficult for the best of the world's
intel folks, and darned near impossible for the rest (which is most of
the rest of the world); that is why US radio procedures are a bit more
relaxed than they used to be before the advent of FH, back when we
tried to keep our transmissions to no more than five seconds at a time
with lots of "breaks" in long messages to make DF'ing more difficult.


Alternately, would something like a pinhole camera work? What I mean
here is: imagine a cubic metal box, 1 m on its side, with a vertical
slit, about 1 cm wide down one of its vertical faces. On the
opposite face, there are detectors for detecting radio waves. If the
elevctromatnetic ratiation coming into the box can only go in
through the slit, and goes in a straight line, then knowing which
detectors are lit up would allow someone to tell where the
radiation was coming from. It may be that, depending on the
wavelength, the incoming radiation would be diffracted by the slit
and would get spread all over the detectors. If this is the case,
perehaps multiple slits could be used, and the diffraction pattern
would differ dependent on the angle with which the radiation strikes
the slitted face? (because the radation at each slit would be
out-of-phase with the radiation at other slits). Has anything like
this been tried?


Hey, I just *used* the critters and was fortunate enough to attend new
equipment training from the manufacturer when we got it; suffice it to
say that use of FH makes DF'ing a remote concern, pretty much
eliminates any concern over jamming (even broad band jamming can only
take down a small percentage of the available spectrum, making voice
transmissions still very clear), and the use of FH combined with
crypto key makes it darned near impossible for the bad guy to decypher
it in any realistic timely manner.


It is
hard enough for the average "rest of the world" intel unit to DF an
old fashioned non-hopping transmitter if the radio operator uses good
RTO procedures--trying to pluck enough of these random
fractional-second bursts out of the ether to determine a direction is
more difficult by a few orders of magnitude.


What methods are used to do DF?


You'd have to find a signals intel puke to answer that one (but you
can rest assured that any really good methods/systems remain
classified).

Brooks

phil hunt September 25th 03 01:10 AM

On 23 Sep 2003 20:00:32 -0700, Kevin Brooks wrote:

No. Paul is correct, DF'ing a "frequency agile" (or "hopping")
transmitter is no easy task. For example, the standard US SINCGARS
radio changes frequencies about one hundred times per *second*,


Bear in mind that I'm talking about automated electronic gear here,
not manual intervention. Electronics works in time spans a lot
quicker than 10 ms.


So what? Unless you know the frequency hopping plan ahead of time
(something that is rather closely guarded), you can't capture enough
of the transmission to do you any good--they use a rather broad
spectrum.


OK, I now understand that DF generally relies on knowing the
frequency in advance.

BTW, when you say a rather broad spectrum, how broad? And divided
into how many bands, roughly?

Both radios have to be loaded with the same frequency hopping (FH)
plan, and then they have to be synchronized by time. When SINGCARS
first came out the time synch had to be done by having the net control
station (NCS) perform periodic radio checks (each time your radio
"talked" to the NCS, it resynchronized to the NCS time hack); failure
to do this could result in the net "splitting", with some of your
radios on one hack, and the rest on another, meaning the two could not
talk to each other. I believe that the newer versions (known as
SINCGARS EPLRS, for enhanced precision location system) may use GPS
time data, ensuring that everyone is always on the same time scale.


That would make sense.

If two receivers, placed say 10 m aparet, both pick up a signal, how
accurately can the time difference between the repetion of both
signals be calculated? Light moves 30 cm in 1 ns, so if time
differences can be calculated to an accuracy of 0.1 ns, then
direction could be resolved to an accuracy of 3 cm/10 m ~= 3 mrad.


The fact is that the direction finding (DF'ing) of frequency agile
commo equipment is extremely difficult for the best of the world's
intel folks, and darned near impossible for the rest (which is most of
the rest of the world); that is why US radio procedures are a bit more
relaxed than they used to be before the advent of FH, back when we
tried to keep our transmissions to no more than five seconds at a time
with lots of "breaks" in long messages to make DF'ing more difficult.


So transmissions of 5 seconds tend to be hard to DF? Of course, with
the battlefield internet, a text transmission will typically be a
lot less than 5 s (assuming the same bandwidth as for a voice
transmission, i.e. somewhere in the region of 20-60 kbit/s).

transmissions still very clear), and the use of FH combined with
crypto key makes it darned near impossible for the bad guy to decypher
it in any realistic timely manner.


Modern crypto is good enough to withstand all cryptanalytic
attacks.

--
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia



phil hunt September 25th 03 01:10 AM

On 23 Sep 2003 20:00:32 -0700, Kevin Brooks wrote:

No. Paul is correct, DF'ing a "frequency agile" (or "hopping")
transmitter is no easy task. For example, the standard US SINCGARS
radio changes frequencies about one hundred times per *second*,


Bear in mind that I'm talking about automated electronic gear here,
not manual intervention. Electronics works in time spans a lot
quicker than 10 ms.


So what? Unless you know the frequency hopping plan ahead of time
(something that is rather closely guarded), you can't capture enough
of the transmission to do you any good--they use a rather broad
spectrum.


OK, I now understand that DF generally relies on knowing the
frequency in advance.

BTW, when you say a rather broad spectrum, how broad? And divided
into how many bands, roughly?

Both radios have to be loaded with the same frequency hopping (FH)
plan, and then they have to be synchronized by time. When SINGCARS
first came out the time synch had to be done by having the net control
station (NCS) perform periodic radio checks (each time your radio
"talked" to the NCS, it resynchronized to the NCS time hack); failure
to do this could result in the net "splitting", with some of your
radios on one hack, and the rest on another, meaning the two could not
talk to each other. I believe that the newer versions (known as
SINCGARS EPLRS, for enhanced precision location system) may use GPS
time data, ensuring that everyone is always on the same time scale.


That would make sense.

If two receivers, placed say 10 m aparet, both pick up a signal, how
accurately can the time difference between the repetion of both
signals be calculated? Light moves 30 cm in 1 ns, so if time
differences can be calculated to an accuracy of 0.1 ns, then
direction could be resolved to an accuracy of 3 cm/10 m ~= 3 mrad.


The fact is that the direction finding (DF'ing) of frequency agile
commo equipment is extremely difficult for the best of the world's
intel folks, and darned near impossible for the rest (which is most of
the rest of the world); that is why US radio procedures are a bit more
relaxed than they used to be before the advent of FH, back when we
tried to keep our transmissions to no more than five seconds at a time
with lots of "breaks" in long messages to make DF'ing more difficult.


So transmissions of 5 seconds tend to be hard to DF? Of course, with
the battlefield internet, a text transmission will typically be a
lot less than 5 s (assuming the same bandwidth as for a voice
transmission, i.e. somewhere in the region of 20-60 kbit/s).

transmissions still very clear), and the use of FH combined with
crypto key makes it darned near impossible for the bad guy to decypher
it in any realistic timely manner.


Modern crypto is good enough to withstand all cryptanalytic
attacks.

--
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia



L'acrobat September 25th 03 03:36 AM


"phil hunt" wrote in message
. ..

transmissions still very clear), and the use of FH combined with
crypto key makes it darned near impossible for the bad guy to decypher
it in any realistic timely manner.


Modern crypto is good enough to withstand all cryptanalytic
attacks.


Thank you Admiral Doenitz...



L'acrobat September 25th 03 03:36 AM


"phil hunt" wrote in message
. ..

transmissions still very clear), and the use of FH combined with
crypto key makes it darned near impossible for the bad guy to decypher
it in any realistic timely manner.


Modern crypto is good enough to withstand all cryptanalytic
attacks.


Thank you Admiral Doenitz...



R. Steve Walz September 25th 03 03:59 AM

L'acrobat wrote:

"phil hunt" wrote in message
. ..

transmissions still very clear), and the use of FH combined with
crypto key makes it darned near impossible for the bad guy to decypher
it in any realistic timely manner.


Modern crypto is good enough to withstand all cryptanalytic
attacks.


Thank you Admiral Doenitz...

------------
He's right. Major breaththrough of all possible barriers, the RSA
algorithm. Uncrackable in the lifetime of the serious user, and
crack is entirely predictable with improved computing power and
can be lengthened to compensate.

-Steve
--
-Steve Walz ftp://ftp.armory.com/pub/user/rstevew
Electronics Site!! 1000's of Files and Dirs!! With Schematics Galore!!
http://www.armory.com/~rstevew or http://www.armory.com/~rstevew/Public

R. Steve Walz September 25th 03 03:59 AM

L'acrobat wrote:

"phil hunt" wrote in message
. ..

transmissions still very clear), and the use of FH combined with
crypto key makes it darned near impossible for the bad guy to decypher
it in any realistic timely manner.


Modern crypto is good enough to withstand all cryptanalytic
attacks.


Thank you Admiral Doenitz...

------------
He's right. Major breaththrough of all possible barriers, the RSA
algorithm. Uncrackable in the lifetime of the serious user, and
crack is entirely predictable with improved computing power and
can be lengthened to compensate.

-Steve
--
-Steve Walz ftp://ftp.armory.com/pub/user/rstevew
Electronics Site!! 1000's of Files and Dirs!! With Schematics Galore!!
http://www.armory.com/~rstevew or http://www.armory.com/~rstevew/Public

L'acrobat September 25th 03 05:47 AM


"R. Steve Walz" wrote in message
...
L'acrobat wrote:

"phil hunt" wrote in message
. ..

transmissions still very clear), and the use of FH combined with
crypto key makes it darned near impossible for the bad guy to

decypher
it in any realistic timely manner.

Modern crypto is good enough to withstand all cryptanalytic
attacks.


Thank you Admiral Doenitz...

------------
He's right. Major breaththrough of all possible barriers, the RSA
algorithm. Uncrackable in the lifetime of the serious user, and
crack is entirely predictable with improved computing power and
can be lengthened to compensate.


The fact that you and I think it is unbeatable, doesn't mean it is.

"lifetime of the serious user" what ********, you and I have absolutely no
idea what sort of tech/processing power will be available 10 years from now,
let alone 30.

"and crack is entirely predictable with improved computing power" of course
it is...

Ask the good Admiral how confident he was that his system was secure.

Damn near as confident as you are and that worked out so well, didn't it?



L'acrobat September 25th 03 05:47 AM


"R. Steve Walz" wrote in message
...
L'acrobat wrote:

"phil hunt" wrote in message
. ..

transmissions still very clear), and the use of FH combined with
crypto key makes it darned near impossible for the bad guy to

decypher
it in any realistic timely manner.

Modern crypto is good enough to withstand all cryptanalytic
attacks.


Thank you Admiral Doenitz...

------------
He's right. Major breaththrough of all possible barriers, the RSA
algorithm. Uncrackable in the lifetime of the serious user, and
crack is entirely predictable with improved computing power and
can be lengthened to compensate.


The fact that you and I think it is unbeatable, doesn't mean it is.

"lifetime of the serious user" what ********, you and I have absolutely no
idea what sort of tech/processing power will be available 10 years from now,
let alone 30.

"and crack is entirely predictable with improved computing power" of course
it is...

Ask the good Admiral how confident he was that his system was secure.

Damn near as confident as you are and that worked out so well, didn't it?



phil hunt September 25th 03 02:10 PM

On Thu, 25 Sep 2003 14:47:07 +1000, L'acrobat wrote:

"lifetime of the serious user" what ********, you and I have absolutely no
idea what sort of tech/processing power will be available 10 years from now,


Ever heard of Moore's law?

I've got a pretty good idea. A typical PC now has a 2 GHz CPU, and
about 256 MB RAM.

Assume these double every 18 months. 10 years is about 7 doublings
so in 2003 we'll see PCs with 250 GHz CPUs and 32 GB of RAM.


--
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia



phil hunt September 25th 03 02:10 PM

On Thu, 25 Sep 2003 14:47:07 +1000, L'acrobat wrote:

"lifetime of the serious user" what ********, you and I have absolutely no
idea what sort of tech/processing power will be available 10 years from now,


Ever heard of Moore's law?

I've got a pretty good idea. A typical PC now has a 2 GHz CPU, and
about 256 MB RAM.

Assume these double every 18 months. 10 years is about 7 doublings
so in 2003 we'll see PCs with 250 GHz CPUs and 32 GB of RAM.


--
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia



Kevin Brooks September 25th 03 02:23 PM

(phil hunt) wrote in message ...
On 23 Sep 2003 20:00:32 -0700, Kevin Brooks wrote:

No. Paul is correct, DF'ing a "frequency agile" (or "hopping")
transmitter is no easy task. For example, the standard US SINCGARS
radio changes frequencies about one hundred times per *second*,

Bear in mind that I'm talking about automated electronic gear here,
not manual intervention. Electronics works in time spans a lot
quicker than 10 ms.


So what? Unless you know the frequency hopping plan ahead of time
(something that is rather closely guarded), you can't capture enough
of the transmission to do you any good--they use a rather broad
spectrum.


OK, I now understand that DF generally relies on knowing the
frequency in advance.

BTW, when you say a rather broad spectrum, how broad? And divided
into how many bands, roughly?


It uses the entire normal military VHF FM spectrum, 30-88 MHz. ISTR
that the steps in between are measured in 1 KHz increments, as opposed
to the old 10 KHz increments found in older FM radios like the
AN/VRC-12 family, so the number of different frequencies SINGCARS can
use is 58,000.


Both radios have to be loaded with the same frequency hopping (FH)
plan, and then they have to be synchronized by time. When SINGCARS
first came out the time synch had to be done by having the net control
station (NCS) perform periodic radio checks (each time your radio
"talked" to the NCS, it resynchronized to the NCS time hack); failure
to do this could result in the net "splitting", with some of your
radios on one hack, and the rest on another, meaning the two could not
talk to each other. I believe that the newer versions (known as
SINCGARS EPLRS, for enhanced precision location system) may use GPS
time data, ensuring that everyone is always on the same time scale.


That would make sense.

If two receivers, placed say 10 m aparet, both pick up a signal, how
accurately can the time difference between the repetion of both
signals be calculated? Light moves 30 cm in 1 ns, so if time
differences can be calculated to an accuracy of 0.1 ns, then
direction could be resolved to an accuracy of 3 cm/10 m ~= 3 mrad.


The fact is that the direction finding (DF'ing) of frequency agile
commo equipment is extremely difficult for the best of the world's
intel folks, and darned near impossible for the rest (which is most of
the rest of the world); that is why US radio procedures are a bit more
relaxed than they used to be before the advent of FH, back when we
tried to keep our transmissions to no more than five seconds at a time
with lots of "breaks" in long messages to make DF'ing more difficult.


So transmissions of 5 seconds tend to be hard to DF? Of course, with
the battlefield internet, a text transmission will typically be a
lot less than 5 s (assuming the same bandwidth as for a voice
transmission, i.e. somewhere in the region of 20-60 kbit/s).


ISTR the old guidance was to keep transmissions no longer than 5 to 7
seconds without a break (a break normally was announced as part of the
message, followed by release of the mic key, then rekeying and
continuing the message).


transmissions still very clear), and the use of FH combined with
crypto key makes it darned near impossible for the bad guy to decypher
it in any realistic timely manner.


Modern crypto is good enough to withstand all cryptanalytic
attacks.


Only if it were so...but thank goodness it is not. Otherwise we would
have lost the value of one of our largest and most valuable intel
programs, and NSA would no longer exist. Even the cypher keys used by
our modern tactical radios (said keys being generated by NSA at the
top end, though we now have computers in the field capable of "key
generation" using input from that source) are not
unbreakable--instead, they are tough enough to break that we can be
reasonably assured that the bad guys will not be able to gain any kind
of *timely* tactical intel; enough computing power in the hands of the
crypto-geeks and they can indeed break them, but it will probably take
them a while, not to mention the time to get the data into their hands
in the first place.

Brooks

Kevin Brooks September 25th 03 02:23 PM

(phil hunt) wrote in message ...
On 23 Sep 2003 20:00:32 -0700, Kevin Brooks wrote:

No. Paul is correct, DF'ing a "frequency agile" (or "hopping")
transmitter is no easy task. For example, the standard US SINCGARS
radio changes frequencies about one hundred times per *second*,

Bear in mind that I'm talking about automated electronic gear here,
not manual intervention. Electronics works in time spans a lot
quicker than 10 ms.


So what? Unless you know the frequency hopping plan ahead of time
(something that is rather closely guarded), you can't capture enough
of the transmission to do you any good--they use a rather broad
spectrum.


OK, I now understand that DF generally relies on knowing the
frequency in advance.

BTW, when you say a rather broad spectrum, how broad? And divided
into how many bands, roughly?


It uses the entire normal military VHF FM spectrum, 30-88 MHz. ISTR
that the steps in between are measured in 1 KHz increments, as opposed
to the old 10 KHz increments found in older FM radios like the
AN/VRC-12 family, so the number of different frequencies SINGCARS can
use is 58,000.


Both radios have to be loaded with the same frequency hopping (FH)
plan, and then they have to be synchronized by time. When SINGCARS
first came out the time synch had to be done by having the net control
station (NCS) perform periodic radio checks (each time your radio
"talked" to the NCS, it resynchronized to the NCS time hack); failure
to do this could result in the net "splitting", with some of your
radios on one hack, and the rest on another, meaning the two could not
talk to each other. I believe that the newer versions (known as
SINCGARS EPLRS, for enhanced precision location system) may use GPS
time data, ensuring that everyone is always on the same time scale.


That would make sense.

If two receivers, placed say 10 m aparet, both pick up a signal, how
accurately can the time difference between the repetion of both
signals be calculated? Light moves 30 cm in 1 ns, so if time
differences can be calculated to an accuracy of 0.1 ns, then
direction could be resolved to an accuracy of 3 cm/10 m ~= 3 mrad.


The fact is that the direction finding (DF'ing) of frequency agile
commo equipment is extremely difficult for the best of the world's
intel folks, and darned near impossible for the rest (which is most of
the rest of the world); that is why US radio procedures are a bit more
relaxed than they used to be before the advent of FH, back when we
tried to keep our transmissions to no more than five seconds at a time
with lots of "breaks" in long messages to make DF'ing more difficult.


So transmissions of 5 seconds tend to be hard to DF? Of course, with
the battlefield internet, a text transmission will typically be a
lot less than 5 s (assuming the same bandwidth as for a voice
transmission, i.e. somewhere in the region of 20-60 kbit/s).


ISTR the old guidance was to keep transmissions no longer than 5 to 7
seconds without a break (a break normally was announced as part of the
message, followed by release of the mic key, then rekeying and
continuing the message).


transmissions still very clear), and the use of FH combined with
crypto key makes it darned near impossible for the bad guy to decypher
it in any realistic timely manner.


Modern crypto is good enough to withstand all cryptanalytic
attacks.


Only if it were so...but thank goodness it is not. Otherwise we would
have lost the value of one of our largest and most valuable intel
programs, and NSA would no longer exist. Even the cypher keys used by
our modern tactical radios (said keys being generated by NSA at the
top end, though we now have computers in the field capable of "key
generation" using input from that source) are not
unbreakable--instead, they are tough enough to break that we can be
reasonably assured that the bad guys will not be able to gain any kind
of *timely* tactical intel; enough computing power in the hands of the
crypto-geeks and they can indeed break them, but it will probably take
them a while, not to mention the time to get the data into their hands
in the first place.

Brooks

Mike Andrews September 25th 03 02:51 PM

In (rec.radio.amateur.homebrew), phil hunt wrote:

Modern crypto is good enough to withstand all cryptanalytic
attacks.


That's a great idea, and I suspect tthat you're right in the general
case. But a modern cryptosystem, badly implemented, will have all
manner of vulnerabilities -- most of which are not particularly
obvious.

Remember the competition for the successor to DES as the standard
crypto algorithm? That was *quite* interesting.

--
"Remember: every member of your 'target audience' also owns a broadcasting
station. These 'targets' can shoot back."
-- Michael Rathbun to advertisers, in nanae

Mike Andrews September 25th 03 02:51 PM

In (rec.radio.amateur.homebrew), phil hunt wrote:

Modern crypto is good enough to withstand all cryptanalytic
attacks.


That's a great idea, and I suspect tthat you're right in the general
case. But a modern cryptosystem, badly implemented, will have all
manner of vulnerabilities -- most of which are not particularly
obvious.

Remember the competition for the successor to DES as the standard
crypto algorithm? That was *quite* interesting.

--
"Remember: every member of your 'target audience' also owns a broadcasting
station. These 'targets' can shoot back."
-- Michael Rathbun to advertisers, in nanae

Avery Fineman September 25th 03 09:54 PM

In article ,
(phil hunt) writes:

On 23 Sep 2003 20:00:32 -0700, Kevin Brooks wrote:

No. Paul is correct, DF'ing a "frequency agile" (or "hopping")
transmitter is no easy task. For example, the standard US SINCGARS
radio changes frequencies about one hundred times per *second*,

Bear in mind that I'm talking about automated electronic gear here,
not manual intervention. Electronics works in time spans a lot
quicker than 10 ms.


So what? Unless you know the frequency hopping plan ahead of time
(something that is rather closely guarded), you can't capture enough
of the transmission to do you any good--they use a rather broad
spectrum.


OK, I now understand that DF generally relies on knowing the
frequency in advance.

BTW, when you say a rather broad spectrum, how broad? And divided
into how many bands, roughly?


On the SINCGARS family it can be the entire region of 30-88 MHz.
With FHSS enabled, the hop rate is 10 per second. The hop
frequency positioning and increments are set by the touch-screen
entry; all the settings go in that way and that is called the "hop set."

One of my work tasks a decade or so ago was to TRY to locate a
SINCGARS emitter using a vehicular model's high power setting
(not the small output of the manpack PRC-119). While I can't say
much about the test details, I think it is safe to say that it was
damn difficult! [my little group was really trying to grab that emitter]

In this case the emitter was on all the time. With the manpack
version as well as the vehicular version there is a power output
selector switch to effectively go "QRP" to a minimum level necessary
to maintain a linkage.

Both radios have to be loaded with the same frequency hopping (FH)
plan, and then they have to be synchronized by time. When SINGCARS
first came out the time synch had to be done by having the net control
station (NCS) perform periodic radio checks (each time your radio
"talked" to the NCS, it resynchronized to the NCS time hack); failure
to do this could result in the net "splitting", with some of your
radios on one hack, and the rest on another, meaning the two could not
talk to each other. I believe that the newer versions (known as
SINCGARS EPLRS, for enhanced precision location system) may use GPS
time data, ensuring that everyone is always on the same time scale.


That would make sense.


The "SIP" (SINCGARS Improvement Program) resulted in ITT Fort Wayne
making the basic R/T in half the original size. Also added was the time
synchronization via a front panel connector to an AN/PSN-11 GPS
receiver...plus full internal voice or data encryption/decryption...voice is
digitized.

If two receivers, placed say 10 m aparet, both pick up a signal, how
accurately can the time difference between the repetion of both
signals be calculated? Light moves 30 cm in 1 ns, so if time
differences can be calculated to an accuracy of 0.1 ns, then
direction could be resolved to an accuracy of 3 cm/10 m ~= 3 mrad.


The fact is that the direction finding (DF'ing) of frequency agile
commo equipment is extremely difficult for the best of the world's
intel folks, and darned near impossible for the rest (which is most of
the rest of the world); that is why US radio procedures are a bit more
relaxed than they used to be before the advent of FH, back when we
tried to keep our transmissions to no more than five seconds at a time
with lots of "breaks" in long messages to make DF'ing more difficult.


So transmissions of 5 seconds tend to be hard to DF? Of course, with
the battlefield internet, a text transmission will typically be a
lot less than 5 s (assuming the same bandwidth as for a voice
transmission, i.e. somewhere in the region of 20-60 kbit/s).


Transmissions lasting only a 100 mSec are VERY hard to "see" over
a bandwidth larger than an octave. Trust me on that. :-)

The hop timing is internally coordinated with voice/data transmission
so that you can't really use fixed-carrier narrowband rules of thumb.
The SINCGARS family isn't really in the "battlefield internet" since all
nets are considered separate entities and many can exist in the same
geographical area. The choice of settings and interoperability is up to
the unit Signal Officer.

transmissions still very clear), and the use of FH combined with
crypto key makes it darned near impossible for the bad guy to decypher
it in any realistic timely manner.


Modern crypto is good enough to withstand all cryptanalytic
attacks.


It is safe to say that even the most modern cryptanalytic attack could
not get much useful information from a SINCGARS net in time to
counter any communications-coordinated military task. SINCGARS is
designed for small-unit land-air tactical operations...it isn't designed or
intended for top-level sensitive communications. In its assigned task,
the System is VERY good.

ITT Fort Wayne, IN, is the contracted manufacturer of SINCGARS. About
a quarter million (!) systems have been built since 1989. The General
Dynamics Land Division in FL made some SINCGARS but GD has since
downsized its Land Division.

There's an amazing amount of publicly-available information on SINCGARS
externals. That includes the frequency range, hop rate, bandwidth, hop
increment and so on. What you will NOT get publicly is the details on
the essential algorithms hardwired into the ICs within.

One of the good fall-outs of the military electronics programs begun in the
1980s is the improved stability of crystal oscillator packages over
temperature and other nasty military environment extremes. That includes
things like temperature-compensated voltage-controlled crystal oscillators
and more specialized crystal cutting for better control over temperature.
Major quartz crystal producers have put that improved technology on the
market. Accurate, stable time control is essential to systems like the
SINgle Channel Ground-Air Radio System.

Len Anderson
retired (from regular hours) electronic engineer person

Avery Fineman September 25th 03 09:54 PM

In article ,
(phil hunt) writes:

On 23 Sep 2003 20:00:32 -0700, Kevin Brooks wrote:

No. Paul is correct, DF'ing a "frequency agile" (or "hopping")
transmitter is no easy task. For example, the standard US SINCGARS
radio changes frequencies about one hundred times per *second*,

Bear in mind that I'm talking about automated electronic gear here,
not manual intervention. Electronics works in time spans a lot
quicker than 10 ms.


So what? Unless you know the frequency hopping plan ahead of time
(something that is rather closely guarded), you can't capture enough
of the transmission to do you any good--they use a rather broad
spectrum.


OK, I now understand that DF generally relies on knowing the
frequency in advance.

BTW, when you say a rather broad spectrum, how broad? And divided
into how many bands, roughly?


On the SINCGARS family it can be the entire region of 30-88 MHz.
With FHSS enabled, the hop rate is 10 per second. The hop
frequency positioning and increments are set by the touch-screen
entry; all the settings go in that way and that is called the "hop set."

One of my work tasks a decade or so ago was to TRY to locate a
SINCGARS emitter using a vehicular model's high power setting
(not the small output of the manpack PRC-119). While I can't say
much about the test details, I think it is safe to say that it was
damn difficult! [my little group was really trying to grab that emitter]

In this case the emitter was on all the time. With the manpack
version as well as the vehicular version there is a power output
selector switch to effectively go "QRP" to a minimum level necessary
to maintain a linkage.

Both radios have to be loaded with the same frequency hopping (FH)
plan, and then they have to be synchronized by time. When SINGCARS
first came out the time synch had to be done by having the net control
station (NCS) perform periodic radio checks (each time your radio
"talked" to the NCS, it resynchronized to the NCS time hack); failure
to do this could result in the net "splitting", with some of your
radios on one hack, and the rest on another, meaning the two could not
talk to each other. I believe that the newer versions (known as
SINCGARS EPLRS, for enhanced precision location system) may use GPS
time data, ensuring that everyone is always on the same time scale.


That would make sense.


The "SIP" (SINCGARS Improvement Program) resulted in ITT Fort Wayne
making the basic R/T in half the original size. Also added was the time
synchronization via a front panel connector to an AN/PSN-11 GPS
receiver...plus full internal voice or data encryption/decryption...voice is
digitized.

If two receivers, placed say 10 m aparet, both pick up a signal, how
accurately can the time difference between the repetion of both
signals be calculated? Light moves 30 cm in 1 ns, so if time
differences can be calculated to an accuracy of 0.1 ns, then
direction could be resolved to an accuracy of 3 cm/10 m ~= 3 mrad.


The fact is that the direction finding (DF'ing) of frequency agile
commo equipment is extremely difficult for the best of the world's
intel folks, and darned near impossible for the rest (which is most of
the rest of the world); that is why US radio procedures are a bit more
relaxed than they used to be before the advent of FH, back when we
tried to keep our transmissions to no more than five seconds at a time
with lots of "breaks" in long messages to make DF'ing more difficult.


So transmissions of 5 seconds tend to be hard to DF? Of course, with
the battlefield internet, a text transmission will typically be a
lot less than 5 s (assuming the same bandwidth as for a voice
transmission, i.e. somewhere in the region of 20-60 kbit/s).


Transmissions lasting only a 100 mSec are VERY hard to "see" over
a bandwidth larger than an octave. Trust me on that. :-)

The hop timing is internally coordinated with voice/data transmission
so that you can't really use fixed-carrier narrowband rules of thumb.
The SINCGARS family isn't really in the "battlefield internet" since all
nets are considered separate entities and many can exist in the same
geographical area. The choice of settings and interoperability is up to
the unit Signal Officer.

transmissions still very clear), and the use of FH combined with
crypto key makes it darned near impossible for the bad guy to decypher
it in any realistic timely manner.


Modern crypto is good enough to withstand all cryptanalytic
attacks.


It is safe to say that even the most modern cryptanalytic attack could
not get much useful information from a SINCGARS net in time to
counter any communications-coordinated military task. SINCGARS is
designed for small-unit land-air tactical operations...it isn't designed or
intended for top-level sensitive communications. In its assigned task,
the System is VERY good.

ITT Fort Wayne, IN, is the contracted manufacturer of SINCGARS. About
a quarter million (!) systems have been built since 1989. The General
Dynamics Land Division in FL made some SINCGARS but GD has since
downsized its Land Division.

There's an amazing amount of publicly-available information on SINCGARS
externals. That includes the frequency range, hop rate, bandwidth, hop
increment and so on. What you will NOT get publicly is the details on
the essential algorithms hardwired into the ICs within.

One of the good fall-outs of the military electronics programs begun in the
1980s is the improved stability of crystal oscillator packages over
temperature and other nasty military environment extremes. That includes
things like temperature-compensated voltage-controlled crystal oscillators
and more specialized crystal cutting for better control over temperature.
Major quartz crystal producers have put that improved technology on the
market. Accurate, stable time control is essential to systems like the
SINgle Channel Ground-Air Radio System.

Len Anderson
retired (from regular hours) electronic engineer person

R. Steve Walz September 26th 03 02:04 AM

L'acrobat wrote:

"R. Steve Walz" wrote in message
...
L'acrobat wrote:

"phil hunt" wrote in message
. ..

transmissions still very clear), and the use of FH combined with
crypto key makes it darned near impossible for the bad guy to

decypher
it in any realistic timely manner.

Modern crypto is good enough to withstand all cryptanalytic
attacks.

Thank you Admiral Doenitz...

------------
He's right. Major breaththrough of all possible barriers, the RSA
algorithm. Uncrackable in the lifetime of the serious user, and
crack is entirely predictable with improved computing power and
can be lengthened to compensate.


The fact that you and I think it is unbeatable, doesn't mean it is.

"lifetime of the serious user" what ********, you and I have absolutely no
idea what sort of tech/processing power will be available 10 years from now,
let alone 30.

-----------------
Nothing CAN magically guess extraordinarily long primes. That will
never just magically become possible. This intrinsic truth resides
in the very mathematics itself, a fact outside of time and progress,
and not in any technology of any kind.


"and crack is entirely predictable with improved computing power" of course
it is...

Ask the good Admiral how confident he was that his system was secure.

----------------------
Irrelevant. His system relied on technology, as any mathematician could
have told him. He merely held his nose and trusted the allies weren't
technically advanced enough to do it quick enough. He lost.

But the "bet" that RSA makes is totally different, in that it relies
statistically upon the ABSOLUTE RANDOM unlikelihood of any absolute
guessing of very large prime numbers by machines whose rate of guessing
is limited and well-known as their intrinsic limit. This number is a
VERY VERY VERY large prime number. In case you don't quite get it, the
most used high security prime number size is greater than the number
of atoms in the entire big-bang universe AND greater than even THAT
by an even GREATER multiplier! See the writings of James Bidzos, CEO of
RSA Tech. for these revelations.


Damn near as confident as you are and that worked out so well, didn't it?

------------------------
You have absolutely NO IDEA what the **** you're talking about.

-Steve
--
-Steve Walz ftp://ftp.armory.com/pub/user/rstevew
Electronics Site!! 1000's of Files and Dirs!! With Schematics Galore!!
http://www.armory.com/~rstevew or http://www.armory.com/~rstevew/Public

R. Steve Walz September 26th 03 02:04 AM

L'acrobat wrote:

"R. Steve Walz" wrote in message
...
L'acrobat wrote:

"phil hunt" wrote in message
. ..

transmissions still very clear), and the use of FH combined with
crypto key makes it darned near impossible for the bad guy to

decypher
it in any realistic timely manner.

Modern crypto is good enough to withstand all cryptanalytic
attacks.

Thank you Admiral Doenitz...

------------
He's right. Major breaththrough of all possible barriers, the RSA
algorithm. Uncrackable in the lifetime of the serious user, and
crack is entirely predictable with improved computing power and
can be lengthened to compensate.


The fact that you and I think it is unbeatable, doesn't mean it is.

"lifetime of the serious user" what ********, you and I have absolutely no
idea what sort of tech/processing power will be available 10 years from now,
let alone 30.

-----------------
Nothing CAN magically guess extraordinarily long primes. That will
never just magically become possible. This intrinsic truth resides
in the very mathematics itself, a fact outside of time and progress,
and not in any technology of any kind.


"and crack is entirely predictable with improved computing power" of course
it is...

Ask the good Admiral how confident he was that his system was secure.

----------------------
Irrelevant. His system relied on technology, as any mathematician could
have told him. He merely held his nose and trusted the allies weren't
technically advanced enough to do it quick enough. He lost.

But the "bet" that RSA makes is totally different, in that it relies
statistically upon the ABSOLUTE RANDOM unlikelihood of any absolute
guessing of very large prime numbers by machines whose rate of guessing
is limited and well-known as their intrinsic limit. This number is a
VERY VERY VERY large prime number. In case you don't quite get it, the
most used high security prime number size is greater than the number
of atoms in the entire big-bang universe AND greater than even THAT
by an even GREATER multiplier! See the writings of James Bidzos, CEO of
RSA Tech. for these revelations.


Damn near as confident as you are and that worked out so well, didn't it?

------------------------
You have absolutely NO IDEA what the **** you're talking about.

-Steve
--
-Steve Walz ftp://ftp.armory.com/pub/user/rstevew
Electronics Site!! 1000's of Files and Dirs!! With Schematics Galore!!
http://www.armory.com/~rstevew or http://www.armory.com/~rstevew/Public

Thomas Schoene September 26th 03 02:55 AM

"R. Steve Walz" wrote in message


Nothing CAN magically guess extraordinarily long primes. That will
never just magically become possible. This intrinsic truth resides
in the very mathematics itself, a fact outside of time and progress,
and not in any technology of any kind.


That's true now, but only to a point. That point is the advent of quantum
computing, which allows you to effectively solve for all the possible
factors in very little time (say 10^500 times faster than conventional
computing for this sort of problem). If QC happens, large prime number
encryption is crackable in a matter of seconds. And there is at least some
reason to beleive that QC is achievable within a couple of decades.

OTOH, the real danger in the near- to mid-term is not crypto-system attack,
but physical compromise of the crypto-system (the adversary getting hold of
the both the mechanism and the keys themselves). If they have the actual
keys, the eavesdroppers can decode RSA just as easily as the intended
recipients.

--
Tom Schoene Replace "invalid" with "net" to e-mail
"If brave men and women never died, there would be nothing
special about bravery." -- Andy Rooney (attributed)





Thomas Schoene September 26th 03 02:55 AM

"R. Steve Walz" wrote in message


Nothing CAN magically guess extraordinarily long primes. That will
never just magically become possible. This intrinsic truth resides
in the very mathematics itself, a fact outside of time and progress,
and not in any technology of any kind.


That's true now, but only to a point. That point is the advent of quantum
computing, which allows you to effectively solve for all the possible
factors in very little time (say 10^500 times faster than conventional
computing for this sort of problem). If QC happens, large prime number
encryption is crackable in a matter of seconds. And there is at least some
reason to beleive that QC is achievable within a couple of decades.

OTOH, the real danger in the near- to mid-term is not crypto-system attack,
but physical compromise of the crypto-system (the adversary getting hold of
the both the mechanism and the keys themselves). If they have the actual
keys, the eavesdroppers can decode RSA just as easily as the intended
recipients.

--
Tom Schoene Replace "invalid" with "net" to e-mail
"If brave men and women never died, there would be nothing
special about bravery." -- Andy Rooney (attributed)





L'acrobat September 26th 03 03:03 AM


"phil hunt" wrote in message
. ..
On Thu, 25 Sep 2003 14:47:07 +1000, L'acrobat

wrote:

"lifetime of the serious user" what ********, you and I have absolutely

no
idea what sort of tech/processing power will be available 10 years from

now,

Ever heard of Moore's law?

I've got a pretty good idea. A typical PC now has a 2 GHz CPU, and
about 256 MB RAM.

Assume these double every 18 months. 10 years is about 7 doublings
so in 2003 we'll see PCs with 250 GHz CPUs and 32 GB of RAM.


Right. you are going to base national security matter on a rule of thumb
that relates to a typical PC.

Good move.



L'acrobat September 26th 03 03:03 AM


"phil hunt" wrote in message
. ..
On Thu, 25 Sep 2003 14:47:07 +1000, L'acrobat

wrote:

"lifetime of the serious user" what ********, you and I have absolutely

no
idea what sort of tech/processing power will be available 10 years from

now,

Ever heard of Moore's law?

I've got a pretty good idea. A typical PC now has a 2 GHz CPU, and
about 256 MB RAM.

Assume these double every 18 months. 10 years is about 7 doublings
so in 2003 we'll see PCs with 250 GHz CPUs and 32 GB of RAM.


Right. you are going to base national security matter on a rule of thumb
that relates to a typical PC.

Good move.



L'acrobat September 26th 03 03:07 AM


"R. Steve Walz" wrote in message
...
L'acrobat wrote:

"R. Steve Walz" wrote in message
...
L'acrobat wrote:

"phil hunt" wrote in message
. ..

transmissions still very clear), and the use of FH combined with
crypto key makes it darned near impossible for the bad guy to

decypher
it in any realistic timely manner.

Modern crypto is good enough to withstand all cryptanalytic
attacks.

Thank you Admiral Doenitz...
------------
He's right. Major breaththrough of all possible barriers, the RSA
algorithm. Uncrackable in the lifetime of the serious user, and
crack is entirely predictable with improved computing power and
can be lengthened to compensate.


The fact that you and I think it is unbeatable, doesn't mean it is.

"lifetime of the serious user" what ********, you and I have absolutely

no
idea what sort of tech/processing power will be available 10 years from

now,
let alone 30.

-----------------
Nothing CAN magically guess extraordinarily long primes. That will
never just magically become possible. This intrinsic truth resides
in the very mathematics itself, a fact outside of time and progress,
and not in any technology of any kind.


"and crack is entirely predictable with improved computing power" of

course
it is...

Ask the good Admiral how confident he was that his system was secure.

----------------------
Irrelevant. His system relied on technology, as any mathematician could
have told him. He merely held his nose and trusted the allies weren't
technically advanced enough to do it quick enough. He lost.

But the "bet" that RSA makes is totally different, in that it relies
statistically upon the ABSOLUTE RANDOM unlikelihood of any absolute
guessing of very large prime numbers by machines whose rate of guessing
is limited and well-known as their intrinsic limit. This number is a
VERY VERY VERY large prime number. In case you don't quite get it, the
most used high security prime number size is greater than the number
of atoms in the entire big-bang universe AND greater than even THAT
by an even GREATER multiplier! See the writings of James Bidzos, CEO of
RSA Tech. for these revelations.


Damn near as confident as you are and that worked out so well, didn't

it?
------------------------
You have absolutely NO IDEA what the **** you're talking about.


See Mr Schoenes response.

It seems that you sir, have no idea what the **** you are talking about.

Again, ask the Good Admiral D how confident he was that his system was safe.



L'acrobat September 26th 03 03:07 AM


"R. Steve Walz" wrote in message
...
L'acrobat wrote:

"R. Steve Walz" wrote in message
...
L'acrobat wrote:

"phil hunt" wrote in message
. ..

transmissions still very clear), and the use of FH combined with
crypto key makes it darned near impossible for the bad guy to

decypher
it in any realistic timely manner.

Modern crypto is good enough to withstand all cryptanalytic
attacks.

Thank you Admiral Doenitz...
------------
He's right. Major breaththrough of all possible barriers, the RSA
algorithm. Uncrackable in the lifetime of the serious user, and
crack is entirely predictable with improved computing power and
can be lengthened to compensate.


The fact that you and I think it is unbeatable, doesn't mean it is.

"lifetime of the serious user" what ********, you and I have absolutely

no
idea what sort of tech/processing power will be available 10 years from

now,
let alone 30.

-----------------
Nothing CAN magically guess extraordinarily long primes. That will
never just magically become possible. This intrinsic truth resides
in the very mathematics itself, a fact outside of time and progress,
and not in any technology of any kind.


"and crack is entirely predictable with improved computing power" of

course
it is...

Ask the good Admiral how confident he was that his system was secure.

----------------------
Irrelevant. His system relied on technology, as any mathematician could
have told him. He merely held his nose and trusted the allies weren't
technically advanced enough to do it quick enough. He lost.

But the "bet" that RSA makes is totally different, in that it relies
statistically upon the ABSOLUTE RANDOM unlikelihood of any absolute
guessing of very large prime numbers by machines whose rate of guessing
is limited and well-known as their intrinsic limit. This number is a
VERY VERY VERY large prime number. In case you don't quite get it, the
most used high security prime number size is greater than the number
of atoms in the entire big-bang universe AND greater than even THAT
by an even GREATER multiplier! See the writings of James Bidzos, CEO of
RSA Tech. for these revelations.


Damn near as confident as you are and that worked out so well, didn't

it?
------------------------
You have absolutely NO IDEA what the **** you're talking about.


See Mr Schoenes response.

It seems that you sir, have no idea what the **** you are talking about.

Again, ask the Good Admiral D how confident he was that his system was safe.



R. Steve Walz September 26th 03 05:36 AM

Thomas Schoene wrote:

"R. Steve Walz" wrote in message


Nothing CAN magically guess extraordinarily long primes. That will
never just magically become possible. This intrinsic truth resides
in the very mathematics itself, a fact outside of time and progress,
and not in any technology of any kind.


That's true now, but only to a point. That point is the advent of quantum
computing, which allows you to effectively solve for all the possible
factors in very little time (say 10^500 times faster than conventional
computing for this sort of problem). If QC happens, large prime number
encryption is crackable in a matter of seconds. And there is at least some
reason to beleive that QC is achievable within a couple of decades.

-----------------------
Or DNA computing, sure.

Just an escalation, the power of operations easier one way than the
other persists and an increase in length results in the same safety.

For it to be otherwise you need to postulate that the govt will be
doing its own fundamental research, and it NEVER does, and that it
will develop QC to that level BEFORE the market sells it or the people
developing it steal it and spread it around to prevent a national
monopoly on power, and that's pretty unlikely.


OTOH, the real danger in the near- to mid-term is not crypto-system attack,
but physical compromise of the crypto-system (the adversary getting hold of
the both the mechanism and the keys themselves). If they have the actual
keys, the eavesdroppers can decode RSA just as easily as the intended
recipients.

--
Tom Schoene Replace "invalid" with "net" to e-mail
"If brave men and women never died, there would be nothing
special about bravery." -- Andy Rooney (attributed)

---------------------
Yes. Goes without saying.

-Steve
--
-Steve Walz ftp://ftp.armory.com/pub/user/rstevew
Electronics Site!! 1000's of Files and Dirs!! With Schematics Galore!!
http://www.armory.com/~rstevew or http://www.armory.com/~rstevew/Public

R. Steve Walz September 26th 03 05:36 AM

Thomas Schoene wrote:

"R. Steve Walz" wrote in message


Nothing CAN magically guess extraordinarily long primes. That will
never just magically become possible. This intrinsic truth resides
in the very mathematics itself, a fact outside of time and progress,
and not in any technology of any kind.


That's true now, but only to a point. That point is the advent of quantum
computing, which allows you to effectively solve for all the possible
factors in very little time (say 10^500 times faster than conventional
computing for this sort of problem). If QC happens, large prime number
encryption is crackable in a matter of seconds. And there is at least some
reason to beleive that QC is achievable within a couple of decades.

-----------------------
Or DNA computing, sure.

Just an escalation, the power of operations easier one way than the
other persists and an increase in length results in the same safety.

For it to be otherwise you need to postulate that the govt will be
doing its own fundamental research, and it NEVER does, and that it
will develop QC to that level BEFORE the market sells it or the people
developing it steal it and spread it around to prevent a national
monopoly on power, and that's pretty unlikely.


OTOH, the real danger in the near- to mid-term is not crypto-system attack,
but physical compromise of the crypto-system (the adversary getting hold of
the both the mechanism and the keys themselves). If they have the actual
keys, the eavesdroppers can decode RSA just as easily as the intended
recipients.

--
Tom Schoene Replace "invalid" with "net" to e-mail
"If brave men and women never died, there would be nothing
special about bravery." -- Andy Rooney (attributed)

---------------------
Yes. Goes without saying.

-Steve
--
-Steve Walz ftp://ftp.armory.com/pub/user/rstevew
Electronics Site!! 1000's of Files and Dirs!! With Schematics Galore!!
http://www.armory.com/~rstevew or http://www.armory.com/~rstevew/Public

R. Steve Walz September 26th 03 05:42 AM

L'acrobat wrote:

"R. Steve Walz" wrote in message
...
L'acrobat wrote:

"R. Steve Walz" wrote in message
...
L'acrobat wrote:

"phil hunt" wrote in message
. ..

transmissions still very clear), and the use of FH combined with
crypto key makes it darned near impossible for the bad guy to
decypher
it in any realistic timely manner.

Modern crypto is good enough to withstand all cryptanalytic
attacks.

Thank you Admiral Doenitz...
------------
He's right. Major breaththrough of all possible barriers, the RSA
algorithm. Uncrackable in the lifetime of the serious user, and
crack is entirely predictable with improved computing power and
can be lengthened to compensate.

The fact that you and I think it is unbeatable, doesn't mean it is.

"lifetime of the serious user" what ********, you and I have absolutely

no
idea what sort of tech/processing power will be available 10 years from

now,
let alone 30.

-----------------
Nothing CAN magically guess extraordinarily long primes. That will
never just magically become possible. This intrinsic truth resides
in the very mathematics itself, a fact outside of time and progress,
and not in any technology of any kind.


"and crack is entirely predictable with improved computing power" of

course
it is...

Ask the good Admiral how confident he was that his system was secure.

----------------------
Irrelevant. His system relied on technology, as any mathematician could
have told him. He merely held his nose and trusted the allies weren't
technically advanced enough to do it quick enough. He lost.

But the "bet" that RSA makes is totally different, in that it relies
statistically upon the ABSOLUTE RANDOM unlikelihood of any absolute
guessing of very large prime numbers by machines whose rate of guessing
is limited and well-known as their intrinsic limit. This number is a
VERY VERY VERY large prime number. In case you don't quite get it, the
most used high security prime number size is greater than the number
of atoms in the entire big-bang universe AND greater than even THAT
by an even GREATER multiplier! See the writings of James Bidzos, CEO of
RSA Tech. for these revelations.


Damn near as confident as you are and that worked out so well, didn't

it?
------------------------
You have absolutely NO IDEA what the **** you're talking about.


See Mr Schoenes response.

It seems that you sir, have no idea what the **** you are talking about.

-------------------
You're a lying **** and a bounder, and you're diddling yourself and
delaying the inevitable.


Again, ask the Good Admiral D how confident he was that his system was safe.

----------------
You're blathering, hoping that line will sustain you while you try
to bluster your way out of this, when the fact is that RSA is
qualitatively different than any systematically crackable cipher.

-Steve
--
-Steve Walz ftp://ftp.armory.com/pub/user/rstevew
Electronics Site!! 1000's of Files and Dirs!! With Schematics Galore!!
http://www.armory.com/~rstevew or http://www.armory.com/~rstevew/Public

R. Steve Walz September 26th 03 05:42 AM

L'acrobat wrote:

"R. Steve Walz" wrote in message
...
L'acrobat wrote:

"R. Steve Walz" wrote in message
...
L'acrobat wrote:

"phil hunt" wrote in message
. ..

transmissions still very clear), and the use of FH combined with
crypto key makes it darned near impossible for the bad guy to
decypher
it in any realistic timely manner.

Modern crypto is good enough to withstand all cryptanalytic
attacks.

Thank you Admiral Doenitz...
------------
He's right. Major breaththrough of all possible barriers, the RSA
algorithm. Uncrackable in the lifetime of the serious user, and
crack is entirely predictable with improved computing power and
can be lengthened to compensate.

The fact that you and I think it is unbeatable, doesn't mean it is.

"lifetime of the serious user" what ********, you and I have absolutely

no
idea what sort of tech/processing power will be available 10 years from

now,
let alone 30.

-----------------
Nothing CAN magically guess extraordinarily long primes. That will
never just magically become possible. This intrinsic truth resides
in the very mathematics itself, a fact outside of time and progress,
and not in any technology of any kind.


"and crack is entirely predictable with improved computing power" of

course
it is...

Ask the good Admiral how confident he was that his system was secure.

----------------------
Irrelevant. His system relied on technology, as any mathematician could
have told him. He merely held his nose and trusted the allies weren't
technically advanced enough to do it quick enough. He lost.

But the "bet" that RSA makes is totally different, in that it relies
statistically upon the ABSOLUTE RANDOM unlikelihood of any absolute
guessing of very large prime numbers by machines whose rate of guessing
is limited and well-known as their intrinsic limit. This number is a
VERY VERY VERY large prime number. In case you don't quite get it, the
most used high security prime number size is greater than the number
of atoms in the entire big-bang universe AND greater than even THAT
by an even GREATER multiplier! See the writings of James Bidzos, CEO of
RSA Tech. for these revelations.


Damn near as confident as you are and that worked out so well, didn't

it?
------------------------
You have absolutely NO IDEA what the **** you're talking about.


See Mr Schoenes response.

It seems that you sir, have no idea what the **** you are talking about.

-------------------
You're a lying **** and a bounder, and you're diddling yourself and
delaying the inevitable.


Again, ask the Good Admiral D how confident he was that his system was safe.

----------------
You're blathering, hoping that line will sustain you while you try
to bluster your way out of this, when the fact is that RSA is
qualitatively different than any systematically crackable cipher.

-Steve
--
-Steve Walz ftp://ftp.armory.com/pub/user/rstevew
Electronics Site!! 1000's of Files and Dirs!! With Schematics Galore!!
http://www.armory.com/~rstevew or http://www.armory.com/~rstevew/Public

L'acrobat September 26th 03 05:55 AM


"R. Steve Walz" wrote in message
...
L'acrobat wrote:

"R. Steve Walz" wrote in message
...
L'acrobat wrote:

"R. Steve Walz" wrote in message
...
L'acrobat wrote:

"phil hunt" wrote in message
. ..

transmissions still very clear), and the use of FH combined

with
crypto key makes it darned near impossible for the bad guy to
decypher
it in any realistic timely manner.

Modern crypto is good enough to withstand all cryptanalytic
attacks.

Thank you Admiral Doenitz...
------------
He's right. Major breaththrough of all possible barriers, the RSA
algorithm. Uncrackable in the lifetime of the serious user, and
crack is entirely predictable with improved computing power and
can be lengthened to compensate.

The fact that you and I think it is unbeatable, doesn't mean it is.

"lifetime of the serious user" what ********, you and I have

absolutely
no
idea what sort of tech/processing power will be available 10 years

from
now,
let alone 30.
-----------------
Nothing CAN magically guess extraordinarily long primes. That will
never just magically become possible. This intrinsic truth resides
in the very mathematics itself, a fact outside of time and progress,
and not in any technology of any kind.


"and crack is entirely predictable with improved computing power" of

course
it is...

Ask the good Admiral how confident he was that his system was

secure.
----------------------
Irrelevant. His system relied on technology, as any mathematician

could
have told him. He merely held his nose and trusted the allies weren't
technically advanced enough to do it quick enough. He lost.

But the "bet" that RSA makes is totally different, in that it relies
statistically upon the ABSOLUTE RANDOM unlikelihood of any absolute
guessing of very large prime numbers by machines whose rate of

guessing
is limited and well-known as their intrinsic limit. This number is a
VERY VERY VERY large prime number. In case you don't quite get it, the
most used high security prime number size is greater than the number
of atoms in the entire big-bang universe AND greater than even THAT
by an even GREATER multiplier! See the writings of James Bidzos, CEO

of
RSA Tech. for these revelations.


Damn near as confident as you are and that worked out so well,

didn't
it?
------------------------
You have absolutely NO IDEA what the **** you're talking about.


See Mr Schoenes response.

It seems that you sir, have no idea what the **** you are talking about.

-------------------
You're a lying **** and a bounder, and you're diddling yourself and
delaying the inevitable.


Not trying to argue your already discredited position anymore Stevie?

Only an idiot would suggest that any code is "Uncrackable in the lifetime of
the serious user" ands so you did.



Again, ask the Good Admiral D how confident he was that his system was

safe.
----------------
You're blathering, hoping that line will sustain you while you try
to bluster your way out of this, when the fact is that RSA is
qualitatively different than any systematically crackable cipher.


As has already been shown, RSA isn't uncrackable, but you are.

What, exactly do you think the NSA is doing with all those 'puters they own?
playing Doom?

Of course RSA is uncrackable, just like the good Admirals systems and I
assume he had a lackwitted buffoon just like you telling him that there was
no way anyone could be decrypting our stuff too...




L'acrobat September 26th 03 05:55 AM


"R. Steve Walz" wrote in message
...
L'acrobat wrote:

"R. Steve Walz" wrote in message
...
L'acrobat wrote:

"R. Steve Walz" wrote in message
...
L'acrobat wrote:

"phil hunt" wrote in message
. ..

transmissions still very clear), and the use of FH combined

with
crypto key makes it darned near impossible for the bad guy to
decypher
it in any realistic timely manner.

Modern crypto is good enough to withstand all cryptanalytic
attacks.

Thank you Admiral Doenitz...
------------
He's right. Major breaththrough of all possible barriers, the RSA
algorithm. Uncrackable in the lifetime of the serious user, and
crack is entirely predictable with improved computing power and
can be lengthened to compensate.

The fact that you and I think it is unbeatable, doesn't mean it is.

"lifetime of the serious user" what ********, you and I have

absolutely
no
idea what sort of tech/processing power will be available 10 years

from
now,
let alone 30.
-----------------
Nothing CAN magically guess extraordinarily long primes. That will
never just magically become possible. This intrinsic truth resides
in the very mathematics itself, a fact outside of time and progress,
and not in any technology of any kind.


"and crack is entirely predictable with improved computing power" of

course
it is...

Ask the good Admiral how confident he was that his system was

secure.
----------------------
Irrelevant. His system relied on technology, as any mathematician

could
have told him. He merely held his nose and trusted the allies weren't
technically advanced enough to do it quick enough. He lost.

But the "bet" that RSA makes is totally different, in that it relies
statistically upon the ABSOLUTE RANDOM unlikelihood of any absolute
guessing of very large prime numbers by machines whose rate of

guessing
is limited and well-known as their intrinsic limit. This number is a
VERY VERY VERY large prime number. In case you don't quite get it, the
most used high security prime number size is greater than the number
of atoms in the entire big-bang universe AND greater than even THAT
by an even GREATER multiplier! See the writings of James Bidzos, CEO

of
RSA Tech. for these revelations.


Damn near as confident as you are and that worked out so well,

didn't
it?
------------------------
You have absolutely NO IDEA what the **** you're talking about.


See Mr Schoenes response.

It seems that you sir, have no idea what the **** you are talking about.

-------------------
You're a lying **** and a bounder, and you're diddling yourself and
delaying the inevitable.


Not trying to argue your already discredited position anymore Stevie?

Only an idiot would suggest that any code is "Uncrackable in the lifetime of
the serious user" ands so you did.



Again, ask the Good Admiral D how confident he was that his system was

safe.
----------------
You're blathering, hoping that line will sustain you while you try
to bluster your way out of this, when the fact is that RSA is
qualitatively different than any systematically crackable cipher.


As has already been shown, RSA isn't uncrackable, but you are.

What, exactly do you think the NSA is doing with all those 'puters they own?
playing Doom?

Of course RSA is uncrackable, just like the good Admirals systems and I
assume he had a lackwitted buffoon just like you telling him that there was
no way anyone could be decrypting our stuff too...




R. Steve Walz September 26th 03 06:11 AM

L'acrobat wrote:

"R. Steve Walz" wrote in message
...

Thank you Admiral Doenitz...
------------
He's right. Major breaththrough of all possible barriers, the RSA
algorithm. Uncrackable in the lifetime of the serious user, and
crack is entirely predictable with improved computing power and
can be lengthened to compensate.

The fact that you and I think it is unbeatable, doesn't mean it is.

"lifetime of the serious user" what ********, you and I have

absolutely
no
idea what sort of tech/processing power will be available 10 years

from
now,
let alone 30.
-----------------
Nothing CAN magically guess extraordinarily long primes. That will
never just magically become possible. This intrinsic truth resides
in the very mathematics itself, a fact outside of time and progress,
and not in any technology of any kind.


"and crack is entirely predictable with improved computing power" of
course
it is...

Ask the good Admiral how confident he was that his system was

secure.
----------------------
Irrelevant. His system relied on technology, as any mathematician

could
have told him. He merely held his nose and trusted the allies weren't
technically advanced enough to do it quick enough. He lost.

But the "bet" that RSA makes is totally different, in that it relies
statistically upon the ABSOLUTE RANDOM unlikelihood of any absolute
guessing of very large prime numbers by machines whose rate of

guessing
is limited and well-known as their intrinsic limit. This number is a
VERY VERY VERY large prime number. In case you don't quite get it, the
most used high security prime number size is greater than the number
of atoms in the entire big-bang universe AND greater than even THAT
by an even GREATER multiplier! See the writings of James Bidzos, CEO

of
RSA Tech. for these revelations.


Damn near as confident as you are and that worked out so well,

didn't
it?
------------------------
You have absolutely NO IDEA what the **** you're talking about.


See Mr Schoenes response.

It seems that you sir, have no idea what the **** you are talking about.

-------------------
You're a lying **** and a bounder, and you're diddling yourself and
delaying the inevitable.


Not trying to argue your already discredited position anymore Stevie?

-----------------------
Ain't any such.


Only an idiot would suggest that any code is "Uncrackable in the lifetime of
the serious user" ands so you did.

---------------------------
It *IS*!
If you choose to try to crack RSA go to their site and download a
test message and try it. None have done so above the known prime
lengths that are do-able.


Again, ask the Good Admiral D how confident he was that his system was

safe.
----------------
You're blathering, hoping that line will sustain you while you try
to bluster your way out of this, when the fact is that RSA is
qualitatively different than any systematically crackable cipher.


As has already been shown, RSA isn't uncrackable,

-------------------
Which we knew, but it takes for ****ing ever statistically.
It can easily be made to take longer than the current age of the
universe.


but you are.

--------------------
More of your meaningless blather and ridiculous self-covering.


What, exactly do you think the NSA is doing with all those 'puters they own?
playing Doom?

---------------------
Monitoring un-coded transmissions en masse hoping to flag trends
or conspiracies by other characteristic signatures.

But as for cracking RSA encoded messages or even kiddy porn being
sent encoded from Europe: Not a whole ****ing hell of a lot anymore.
They are hoping their hardware will frighten terrorists out of using
commonly available public domain technology to completely defeat them,
while knowing that everyone who knows anything knows they are totally
defeated by any kid with a computer if he bothers to look it up and
download the tools and use a long enough bit-length and a decent
firewall properly installed.


Of course RSA is uncrackable, just like the good Admirals systems
and I
assume he had a lackwitted buffoon just like you telling him that there was
no way anyone could be decrypting our stuff too...

---------------------------
That's irrelevant, because he would have simply been technically
wrong out of his own ignorance of cryptology, whereas I am not.

-Steve
--
-Steve Walz ftp://ftp.armory.com/pub/user/rstevew
Electronics Site!! 1000's of Files and Dirs!! With Schematics Galore!!
http://www.armory.com/~rstevew or http://www.armory.com/~rstevew/Public

R. Steve Walz September 26th 03 06:11 AM

L'acrobat wrote:

"R. Steve Walz" wrote in message
...

Thank you Admiral Doenitz...
------------
He's right. Major breaththrough of all possible barriers, the RSA
algorithm. Uncrackable in the lifetime of the serious user, and
crack is entirely predictable with improved computing power and
can be lengthened to compensate.

The fact that you and I think it is unbeatable, doesn't mean it is.

"lifetime of the serious user" what ********, you and I have

absolutely
no
idea what sort of tech/processing power will be available 10 years

from
now,
let alone 30.
-----------------
Nothing CAN magically guess extraordinarily long primes. That will
never just magically become possible. This intrinsic truth resides
in the very mathematics itself, a fact outside of time and progress,
and not in any technology of any kind.


"and crack is entirely predictable with improved computing power" of
course
it is...

Ask the good Admiral how confident he was that his system was

secure.
----------------------
Irrelevant. His system relied on technology, as any mathematician

could
have told him. He merely held his nose and trusted the allies weren't
technically advanced enough to do it quick enough. He lost.

But the "bet" that RSA makes is totally different, in that it relies
statistically upon the ABSOLUTE RANDOM unlikelihood of any absolute
guessing of very large prime numbers by machines whose rate of

guessing
is limited and well-known as their intrinsic limit. This number is a
VERY VERY VERY large prime number. In case you don't quite get it, the
most used high security prime number size is greater than the number
of atoms in the entire big-bang universe AND greater than even THAT
by an even GREATER multiplier! See the writings of James Bidzos, CEO

of
RSA Tech. for these revelations.


Damn near as confident as you are and that worked out so well,

didn't
it?
------------------------
You have absolutely NO IDEA what the **** you're talking about.


See Mr Schoenes response.

It seems that you sir, have no idea what the **** you are talking about.

-------------------
You're a lying **** and a bounder, and you're diddling yourself and
delaying the inevitable.


Not trying to argue your already discredited position anymore Stevie?

-----------------------
Ain't any such.


Only an idiot would suggest that any code is "Uncrackable in the lifetime of
the serious user" ands so you did.

---------------------------
It *IS*!
If you choose to try to crack RSA go to their site and download a
test message and try it. None have done so above the known prime
lengths that are do-able.


Again, ask the Good Admiral D how confident he was that his system was

safe.
----------------
You're blathering, hoping that line will sustain you while you try
to bluster your way out of this, when the fact is that RSA is
qualitatively different than any systematically crackable cipher.


As has already been shown, RSA isn't uncrackable,

-------------------
Which we knew, but it takes for ****ing ever statistically.
It can easily be made to take longer than the current age of the
universe.


but you are.

--------------------
More of your meaningless blather and ridiculous self-covering.


What, exactly do you think the NSA is doing with all those 'puters they own?
playing Doom?

---------------------
Monitoring un-coded transmissions en masse hoping to flag trends
or conspiracies by other characteristic signatures.

But as for cracking RSA encoded messages or even kiddy porn being
sent encoded from Europe: Not a whole ****ing hell of a lot anymore.
They are hoping their hardware will frighten terrorists out of using
commonly available public domain technology to completely defeat them,
while knowing that everyone who knows anything knows they are totally
defeated by any kid with a computer if he bothers to look it up and
download the tools and use a long enough bit-length and a decent
firewall properly installed.


Of course RSA is uncrackable, just like the good Admirals systems
and I
assume he had a lackwitted buffoon just like you telling him that there was
no way anyone could be decrypting our stuff too...

---------------------------
That's irrelevant, because he would have simply been technically
wrong out of his own ignorance of cryptology, whereas I am not.

-Steve
--
-Steve Walz ftp://ftp.armory.com/pub/user/rstevew
Electronics Site!! 1000's of Files and Dirs!! With Schematics Galore!!
http://www.armory.com/~rstevew or http://www.armory.com/~rstevew/Public

phil hunt September 26th 03 07:52 PM

On 25 Sep 2003 06:23:38 -0700, Kevin Brooks wrote:
(phil hunt) wrote in message ...
On 23 Sep 2003 20:00:32 -0700, Kevin Brooks wrote:

No. Paul is correct, DF'ing a "frequency agile" (or "hopping")
transmitter is no easy task. For example, the standard US SINCGARS
radio changes frequencies about one hundred times per *second*,

Bear in mind that I'm talking about automated electronic gear here,
not manual intervention. Electronics works in time spans a lot
quicker than 10 ms.

So what? Unless you know the frequency hopping plan ahead of time
(something that is rather closely guarded), you can't capture enough
of the transmission to do you any good--they use a rather broad
spectrum.


OK, I now understand that DF generally relies on knowing the
frequency in advance.

BTW, when you say a rather broad spectrum, how broad? And divided
into how many bands, roughly?


It uses the entire normal military VHF FM spectrum, 30-88 MHz. ISTR
that the steps in between are measured in 1 KHz increments, as opposed
to the old 10 KHz increments found in older FM radios like the
AN/VRC-12 family, so the number of different frequencies SINGCARS can
use is 58,000.


More than one 1 kHz slot is likely to be in use at anyone time,
since you need enough bandwidth for voice. Say 20, then about
1/3000th of the frequency space is in use at any one time.

Modern crypto is good enough to withstand all cryptanalytic
attacks.


Only if it were so...but thank goodness it is not.


Oh? So who can break AES/Rijndael?

Otherwise we would
have lost the value of one of our largest and most valuable intel
programs, and NSA would no longer exist. Even the cypher keys used by
our modern tactical radios (said keys being generated by NSA at the
top end, though we now have computers in the field capable of "key
generation" using input from that source) are not
unbreakable--instead, they are tough enough to break that we can be
reasonably assured that the bad guys will not be able to gain any kind
of *timely* tactical intel; enough computing power in the hands of the
crypto-geeks and they can indeed break them,


True, but "enough" happens to be more than all the computers in
existance right now, or likely to exist.

Assume: there are 1 billion computers, each of which can check 1
billion keys/second.

Then a brute-force search on a 128-bit keyspace would take about
10^60 years.

--
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia



phil hunt September 26th 03 07:52 PM

On 25 Sep 2003 06:23:38 -0700, Kevin Brooks wrote:
(phil hunt) wrote in message ...
On 23 Sep 2003 20:00:32 -0700, Kevin Brooks wrote:

No. Paul is correct, DF'ing a "frequency agile" (or "hopping")
transmitter is no easy task. For example, the standard US SINCGARS
radio changes frequencies about one hundred times per *second*,

Bear in mind that I'm talking about automated electronic gear here,
not manual intervention. Electronics works in time spans a lot
quicker than 10 ms.

So what? Unless you know the frequency hopping plan ahead of time
(something that is rather closely guarded), you can't capture enough
of the transmission to do you any good--they use a rather broad
spectrum.


OK, I now understand that DF generally relies on knowing the
frequency in advance.

BTW, when you say a rather broad spectrum, how broad? And divided
into how many bands, roughly?


It uses the entire normal military VHF FM spectrum, 30-88 MHz. ISTR
that the steps in between are measured in 1 KHz increments, as opposed
to the old 10 KHz increments found in older FM radios like the
AN/VRC-12 family, so the number of different frequencies SINGCARS can
use is 58,000.


More than one 1 kHz slot is likely to be in use at anyone time,
since you need enough bandwidth for voice. Say 20, then about
1/3000th of the frequency space is in use at any one time.

Modern crypto is good enough to withstand all cryptanalytic
attacks.


Only if it were so...but thank goodness it is not.


Oh? So who can break AES/Rijndael?

Otherwise we would
have lost the value of one of our largest and most valuable intel
programs, and NSA would no longer exist. Even the cypher keys used by
our modern tactical radios (said keys being generated by NSA at the
top end, though we now have computers in the field capable of "key
generation" using input from that source) are not
unbreakable--instead, they are tough enough to break that we can be
reasonably assured that the bad guys will not be able to gain any kind
of *timely* tactical intel; enough computing power in the hands of the
crypto-geeks and they can indeed break them,


True, but "enough" happens to be more than all the computers in
existance right now, or likely to exist.

Assume: there are 1 billion computers, each of which can check 1
billion keys/second.

Then a brute-force search on a 128-bit keyspace would take about
10^60 years.

--
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia



phil hunt September 26th 03 07:53 PM

On Thu, 25 Sep 2003 13:51:14 +0000 (UTC), Mike Andrews wrote:
In (rec.radio.amateur.homebrew), phil hunt wrote:

Modern crypto is good enough to withstand all cryptanalytic
attacks.


That's a great idea, and I suspect tthat you're right in the general
case. But a modern cryptosystem, badly implemented, will have all
manner of vulnerabilities -- most of which are not particularly
obvious.


Absolutely.

Remember the competition for the successor to DES as the standard
crypto algorithm? That was *quite* interesting.


What was interesting about it?

--
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia



phil hunt September 26th 03 07:53 PM

On Thu, 25 Sep 2003 13:51:14 +0000 (UTC), Mike Andrews wrote:
In (rec.radio.amateur.homebrew), phil hunt wrote:

Modern crypto is good enough to withstand all cryptanalytic
attacks.


That's a great idea, and I suspect tthat you're right in the general
case. But a modern cryptosystem, badly implemented, will have all
manner of vulnerabilities -- most of which are not particularly
obvious.


Absolutely.

Remember the competition for the successor to DES as the standard
crypto algorithm? That was *quite* interesting.


What was interesting about it?

--
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia




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