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Jack Appelbaum suggests that US sponsored cyberweapons tend to use RC6 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0w36GAyZIA&feature=youtu.be&t=43m30s http://www.youtube.
by xnull2guest 12y ago
Jack Appelbaum suggests that US sponsored cyberweapons tend to use RC6 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0w36GAyZIA&feature=youtu.be&t=43m30s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0w36GAyZIA&feature=youtu.be&...) for whatever weight that adds to the case that this isn't the US.
- tptacek 12y agoIt's Jacob, not Jack. I'm really not sure how much credence I give crypto comments from Appelbaum. The idea doesn't make much sense: the NSA has access to tons of different ciphers; why would they use a patented commercial cipher nobody else uses? It's all the downside of COTS (a public target for cryptanalytic research and an idiosyncratic choice that makes it easier to attribute attacks to them) but none of the upside. With RC6 you don't even get good open source library support. But either way: RC5 and RC6 are very different things.
- xnull2guest 12y ago> It's Jacob, not Jack. Whoops. Silly. Thanks. > I'm really not sure how much credence I give crypto comments from Appelbaum. In this case it isn't a crypto comment as much as it is a forensic one. His suggestion comes from experience working with and reversing US malware. We do know that some US malware samples did use RC6, but that's hardly enough to say with confidence that this is a ubiquitous choice for all US malware. My guess would be that it is not. > With RC6 you don't even get good open source library support. I'm not sure how worried they are about this.
- tptacek 12y agoThey should be, because popular open source implementations (really, any popular implementation --- it just happens that every popular crypto implementation is open source) provide deniability.