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NSA's History of Communications Security — For Your Eyes, Too

Posted by timothy on from the as-long-as-it-passes-through-ft-meade dept.

Phil Sp. writes "Government Attic, those fine investigative pack rats, have outdone themselves this time. Just posted: a declassified NSA document entitled A History of Communications Security, Volumes I and II: The David G. Boak Lectures [PDF] from 1973 and 1981. This is an absolutely fascinating look into how the NSA viewed (views?) communications security and touches on all sorts of topics, including public key crypto, economics, DES, tamper-resistance, etc. It was seemingly from a collection of lectures to new employees. The first 85 pages are heavily redacted but the remaining 80 or so are largely intact. It even concludes with a cryptogram puzzle for the reader!"

7 of 52 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Their "FLOP" section was blanked out. :( by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The fact that the section exists kinda already shows they recognize their mistake(s). The fact that its blanked out only means they don't want certain people to know the specifics.

  2. Why was it classified by Techmeology · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Why was it classified? Given that all good security must be based on rigorous unbreakability, not secrecy, the analytical powers of many eyes would have been useful. Also, I'm opposed to governmental secrecy.

    --
    Excuse for why is your room always messy?
    1. Re:Why was it classified by FishWithAHammer · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Security through obscurity isn't security, but security plus obscurity is better security so long as the obscurity holds.

      --
      "You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
    2. Re:Why was it classified by darkmeridian · · Score: 3, Interesting

      In the real world, knowing what people know is very important. Releasing what you know and what you know others to know would be a disastrous turn for a national security agency (NSA). Whether the bad guys fell for your double agent's lies, for instance, is a crucial fact. If the NSA has compromised a whole bunch of communications systems, we don't want the people using the systems to know that they're compromised!

      --
      A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
  3. Nice addition by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Nice addition to "Cryptology During the Cold War, 1945-1989"
    http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/14/1629239

  4. Breaking the rules. Sea story by nsaspook · · Score: 2, Interesting

    AP/UPI/TAS transmitted the news via HF rtty links long ago. To receive up to date news for the crew the Radiomen on the ship would connect a TTY normally used for classifed traffic to a RTTY demodulator. The problem was that per "RED/BLACK" (page 90 on the NSA doc), the TTY was RED and the RTTY demod was BLACK. It was totally forbidden to interconnect the systems and patch panels had to be so many feet apart and in separate rooms. Only a NSA approved crypto device could be used in the middle.

        So every shop would make a 20foot long patch cable for the connection. Our approved patch cords were only about 2 feet. Every NSA audit they had to hid this cable or be hit for a major violation. Everbody knew it was happening but looked the other way because the CO of the ship wanted his news.

    http://www.virhistory.com/navy/rtty-demod.htm

    --
    In GOD we trust, all others we monitor.
  5. I found some of the redacted text by Tracy+Reed · · Score: 3, Interesting

    So here I am reading the document linked in this story when I get to page 85 about tempest. I encounter the phrases "He sauntered past a kind of carport jutting out..." and "a carefully concealed dipole antenna, horizontally polarized." And I thought...I've heard these exact words somewhere else before. Where would I have encountered this exact wording from a document which has been declassified just in the past few days? I dumped the phrase into google and sure enough:

    http://www.nsa.gov/public/pdf/tempest.pdf

    Here it is in this document about tempest which was declassified 9-27-2007. It contains a lot more about the story in Japan and tempest etc.

    And I notice that this document contains what is certainly the redacted paragraph in the other document between the paragraph about the discovery of the antenna and the one that begins "Why, way back in 1954, when the Soviets published a rather comprehensive set of standards..."

    This paragraph is about how 40 microphones were found in the US embassy in Moscow and talks about a "large metal grid buried in the cement of the ceiling over the Department of State communications area" and that it had a wire leading off somewhere. Apparently such things were being found as far back as 1953 and the US did not know what their purpose was.

    The next paragraph puts the above into context when it says that in 1954 "the Soviets published a rather comprehensive set of standards for the suppression of radio frequency interference". So the previous paragraph reveals some details about what kinds of devices were found but the second paragraph goes on to imply that the Soviets may have been listening in on our unencrypted electronic communications for at least 10 years before the US figured out that it was possible to do so and took action.

    It's funny how something which would seem so obvious to us now in hindsight baffled the NSA for at least 10 years. It is also funny that it is possible to reconstruct redacted materials from declassified documents using Google due to the use of cut and paste from a document written back in 1973.