NIST is just down the street from where I work, so a co-worker and I crashed the press conference. After navigating the sprawling government expanse, we arrived at the lecture room only to be interrogated as to what press organization we are from.
Mind you, showing up in t-shirts and shorts probably didn't help our credibility much, so I claimed that we were from Slashdot and we were allowed in with a shiny press kit.
The small audience was divided up between press people and stiff jaw types in conservative suits and ties. (spooks) I can't decide, though, which group decided to stare more at our hacker apparel, wondering who let the 2 techies in.
To NIST's credit, the evaluation of the various algorithms seems to have been done totally in the public eye. The analysis of the various candidate algorithms is supposedly posted publically and the algorithms are royalty-free. Plus, no modifications were allowed to the algorithms, so it's fairly unlikely that the NSA got their fingers into it.
To give props to SecurityFocus, a representative questioned the involvement of the NSA and asked why we should trust the government.
Slashdot Mirror
But there's also stories that they modified the initial values of DES in such a way as to weaken them.
NIST is just down the street from where I work, so a co-worker and I crashed the press conference. After navigating the sprawling government expanse, we arrived at the lecture room only to be interrogated as to what press organization we are from. Mind you, showing up in t-shirts and shorts probably didn't help our credibility much, so I claimed that we were from Slashdot and we were allowed in with a shiny press kit. The small audience was divided up between press people and stiff jaw types in conservative suits and ties. (spooks) I can't decide, though, which group decided to stare more at our hacker apparel, wondering who let the 2 techies in. To NIST's credit, the evaluation of the various algorithms seems to have been done totally in the public eye. The analysis of the various candidate algorithms is supposedly posted publically and the algorithms are royalty-free. Plus, no modifications were allowed to the algorithms, so it's fairly unlikely that the NSA got their fingers into it. To give props to SecurityFocus, a representative questioned the involvement of the NSA and asked why we should trust the government.