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0 pointsjavert12y ago0 comments

> milspec != NSA

What exactly is "milspec"? I was under the impression that military security standards in the US _are_ produced by the NSA.

> highly likely the Russians would help the Iranians in such an endeavor in exchange for intelligence sharing.

I must be missing something... yes, but what do Russians have to do with it? I thought this was a US drone captured by Iranians. Genuine question here.

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s_q_b12y ago· 2 in thread

MIL-SPEC means encryption built to military specifications. It includes, but does not equate to, NSA Suite B cryptography. As you can imagine, using crypto designed by a paranoid spook agency would not be appropriate for all military applications, for example a near-real-time flight application. As a result, there are a variety of encryption standards used by the military, some of which would be approved by the NSA, others which wouldn't.

It's a good question about the Russians. The ties between Russia and Iran are much tighter than most in the US realize, especially when it comes to national security, and particularly with regard to US-related issues. If we used industrial grade crypto on a system, it would be in line with past behaviors for the Russians to help the Iranians with it.

javertOP12y ago

Thanks.

Regarding the Russians: Oh, I see, now. Yes, you're right that if country X cracks our encryption, we can't assume that they didn't get help from <insert China or Russia here>.

> for example a near-real-time flight application.

Wait, why do you say such a system wouldn't use NSA-grade encryption?

s_q_b12y ago

> for example a near-real-time flight application.

Primarily latency. Now, ideally you'd like the entire subsystem moved off disk into volatile memory, but for some things you're going to have to read from disk. I can imagine cases where that wouldn't be easily feasible if the drive had NSA crypto.

"Regarding the Russians: Oh, I see, now. Yes, you're right that if country X cracks our encryption, we can't assume that they didn't get help from <insert China or Russia here>."

Right, but its more than that in the case of the Iranians. The Russians have a long and documented history of assistance to the Iranians and the Syrians.

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