Decius wrote:
] ] American intelligence officials have said that Mr.
] ] Chalabi informed Iran that the United States had broken
] ] the secret codes used by Iranian intelligence to
] ] transmit confidential messages to posts around the
] ] world.
]
] Very interesting. Get your bullshit detector warmed up because
] maybe he did, or maybe they want you to think that he did, or
] maybe they want you to think that they want you to think that
] they did, or maybe ...

When this story first broke, and before it, when the more general "Chalabi leak" stories were going around, my reaction was, "This is news? To whom?"

Shouldn't they have assumed this was the case? Shouldn't everyone assume this is the case? If not, who are they kidding but themselves? I mean, the Iranian intelligence service can't honestly be surprised by this news. Sure, it is perhaps embarrassing to have it publicly disclosed, but really -- is this a news flash?

As I listened to the NPR story this afternoon, all I could do was keep saying to myself, "Games! Games! Games!" Games within games within more games. It's a regular Alice in Wonderland.

] I wonder what Iranian encryption is like. I wonder how easy it
] is for them to deploy a new cipher. I wonder how hard it will
] be for us to break their new cipher. If they've got one
] waiting in the wings, then maybe we also have a crack waiting
] in the wings ...

Perry Metzger posted the NYT story to the cryptography list, but there's been no discussion as yet.

The NPR story was talking about how absolutely disastrous this disclosure would be for the US. The reporter was really dressing it up, big time. My, oh, my. Can you see the sky falling? On and on.

You have to assume they were already using the best they had. Any alternative to which they would hastily switch over is unlikely to be dramatically better. Actually, this pseudo-crisis represents a certain kind of opportunity, because they may soon reach out for some emergency help.

Don't overthink the "cipher" end of things. Proper protection has as much to do with key generation and management, maintaing positive control and physical integrity of the hardware, etc. as it does with "cryptography" in any academic sense.

RE: Chalabi told Iran U.S. broke their codes?