Dabbling in the Cryptographic World (1999)

bell-labs.com

52 points·timdierks··8 comments

AFAIK, "Thus the current citation for it is J. Reeds, D. Ritchie, R. Morris, "The Hagelin Cipher Machine (M-209): Cryptanalysis from Ciphertext Alone", unpublished technical memorandum, Bell Laboratories, 1978. Submitted to Cryptologia."

has been published in 2015:

http://cryptome.org/2015/12/ReedsTheHagelinCipherBellLabs197...

> I suspect we all had the feeling that we'd shaken a velvet-gloved hand on friendly terms and sensed that there was steel underneath.

Could someone explain what Dennis means when he says this? I didn't really understand the phrase

This means that he perceived a threat disguised as politeness.

The polite, friendly, retired gentleman could neither confirm or deny that life would get rather difficult if publication proceeded. (ie he wanted to make himself clear without stating directly)

I seldom get that kind of hint. I bet I would have published the damn paper, not because I'd felt it would be my duty as a scientist or citizen, but out of sheer obliviousness to possible consequences.

It's an idiom: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/an-iron-...

At the end of the paper there's a specific hint what was behind NSA's non-wilingness to be explicit, at that time, as Crypto AG from Switzerland is mentioned.

Wikipedia has some details about Crypto AG which are a good afterword to the DMR's article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG#Compromised_machines

Url changed from https://web.archive.org/web/19990220131246/http://cm.bell-la..., which points to this.

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