Digital Fortress Chapter 7

Susans mind was racing-Ensei Tankado wrote a curriculum that creates splinterproof codes She could bargonly grasp the thought.Digital garrison, Strathmore said. Thats what hes c eerying it. Its the ultimate counterintelligence weapon. If this course of study hits the market, every third grader with a modem will be able to unhorse codes the NSA bumt break. Our intelligence will be shot. precisely Susans thoughts were far removed from the political implications of Digital Fortress. She was still struggling to comprehend its existence. Shed spent her life fracture codes, firmly denying the existence of the ultimate code. Every code is breakable-the Bergofsky Principle She snarl uniform an atheist coming face to face with God.If this code postures out, she whispered, cryptography will be survey a dead science.Strathmore nodded. Thats the least of our problems.Can we assume Tankado off? I know he hates us, precisely faecal mattert we offer him a a couple of(prenominal) mil lion dollars? Convince him not to distribute?Strathmore laughed. A few million? Do you know what this thing is worth? Every establishment in the world will bid top dollar. Can you recollect telling the President that were still cable-snooping the Iraqis but we cant read the intercepts anymore? This isnt vindicatory slightly the NSA, its approximately the entire intelligence community. This facility provides support for every genius-the FBI, CIA, DEA theyd all be flying blind. The drug cartels shipments would suit untraceable, major corporations could transfer currency with no paper trail and leave the IRS out in the cold, terrorists could inflict in total secrecy-it would be chaos.The EFF will take a shit stadium day, Susan said, pale.The EFF doesnt have the first clue about what we do here, Strathmore railed in disgust. If they k saucily how many terrorist attacks weve stopped because we can decrypt codes, theyd change their tune.Susan agreed, but she likewise knew the r ealities the EFF would never know how important TRANSLTR was. TRANSLTR had helped foil dozens of attacks, but the information was highly classified and would never be becomed. The rationale laughingstock the secrecy was simple The government could not afford the mass ferocity caused by revealing the truth no one knew how the earth would react to the news that there had been devil nuclear close calls by fundamentalist groups on U.S. soil in the last year.Nuclear attack, however, was not the alone threat. Only last month TRANSLTR had thwarted one of the to the highest degree ingeniously conceived terrorist attacks the NSA had ever witnessed. An anti-government organization had devised a plan, code- earnd Sherwood Forest. It targeted the New York stock Exchange with the designing of redistributing the wealth. Over the course of six days, members of the group stanced twenty-seven no(prenominal)xplosive flux pods in the buildings surrounding the Exchange. These devices, when detonated, create a compelling fool of magnetism. The simultaneous discharge of these carefully placed pods would create a magnetic field so powerful that all magnetic media in the Stock Exchange would be erased-com graveler hard drives, massive ROM storage banks, attach backups, and even floppy disks. All records of who owned what would disintegrate permanently.Because pinpoint succession was necessary for simultaneous detonation of the devices, the flux pods were interconnected over profit telephone lines. During the two-day countdown, the pods internal clocks exchanged endless streams of encrypted synchronization data. The NSA intercepted the data-pulses as a network anomaly but ignored them as a seemingly harmless exchange of gibberish. But after TRANSLTR decrypted the data streams, analysts outright recognized the sequence as a network-synchronized countdown. The pods were located and removed a full three hours before they were scheduled to go off.Susan knew that without TRANSLTR the NSA was helpless against travel electronic terrorism. She eyed the Run-Monitor. It still read over fifteen hours. sluice if Tankados file broke right now, the NSA was sunk. Crypto would be relegated to breaking less than two codes a day. Even at the present rate of 150 a day, there was still a backlog of files awaiting decryption.Tankado called me last month, Strathmore said, interrupting Susans thoughts.Susan looked up. Tankado called you?He nodded. To reproach me.Warn you? He hates you.He called to tell me he was perfecting an algorithmic rule that wrote infrangible codes. I didnt commit him.But why would he tell you about it? Susan demanded. Did he want you to buy it?No. It was blackmail.Things suddenly began falling into place for Susan. Of course, she said, amazed. He wanted you to clear his name.No, Strathmore frowned. Tankado wanted TRANSLTR.TRANSLTR?Yes. He ordered me to go public and tell the world we have TRANSLTR. He said if we admitted we can read pub lic E-mail, he would destroy Digital Fortress.Susan looked doubtful.Strathmore shrugged. Either way, its also late now. Hes post a complimentary replicate of Digital Fortress at his Internet website. Everyone in the world can download it.Susan went white. He whatIts a publicity stunt. Nothing to worry about. The copy he posted is encrypted. People can download it, but nobody can dissonant it. Its ingenious, really. The source code for Digital Fortress has been encrypted, locked shut.Susan looked amazed. Of course So everybody can have a copy, but nobody can open it.Exactly. Tankados abatement a carrot.Have you seen the algorithm?The commander looked puzzled. No, I told you its encrypted.Susan looked equally puzzled. But weve got TRANSLTR why not just decrypt it? But when Susan saw Strathmores face, she recognize the rules had changed. Oh my God. She gasped, suddenly understanding. Digital Fortress is encrypted with itself?Strathmore nodded. Bingo.Susan was amazed. The conventi onalism for Digital Fortress had been encrypted development Digital Fortress. Tankado had posted a priceless mathematical recipe, but the textbook of the recipe had been scrambled. And it had used itself to do the scrambling.Its Bigglemans Safe, Susan stammered in awe.Strathmore nodded. Bigglemans Safe was a suppositious cryptography scenario in which a risk-free builder wrote blueprints for an unbreakable safe. He wanted to keep the blueprints a secret, so he built the safe and locked the blueprints inside. Tankado had done the same thing with Digital Fortress. Hed protected his blueprints by encrypting them with the design outlined in his blueprints.And the file in TRANSLTR? Susan asked.I downloaded it from Tankados Internet site like everyone else. The NSA is now the proud owner of the Digital Fortress algorithm we just cant open it.Susan marveled at Ensei Tankados ingenuity. Without revealing his algorithm, he had proven to the NSA that it was unbreakable. Strathmore reach her a newspaper clipping. It was a translated blurb from the Nikkei Shimbun, the japanese equivalent of the fence Street Journal, stating that the Japanese programmer Ensei Tankado had completed a mathematical formula he claimed could write unbreakable codes. The formula was called Digital Fortress and was purchasable for review on the Internet. The programmer would be selling it off to the highest bidder. The column went on to say that although there was enormous interest in Japan, the few U.S. packet companies who had heard about Digital Fortress deemed the claim preposterous, akin to crook lead to gold. The formula, they said, was a hoax and not to be taken seriously.Susan looked up. An auction?Strathmore nodded. Right now every software company in Japan has downloaded an encrypted copy of Digital Fortress and is trying to crack it open. Every secant they cant, the bidding price climbs.Thats absurd, Susan shot back. All the new encrypted files are uncrackable unless you ha ve TRANSLTR. Digital Fortress could be nothing more than a generic, public-domain algorithm, and none of these companies could break it.But its a brilliant marketing ploy, Strathmore said. Think about it-all brands of bulletproof glass stop bullets, but if a company dares you to put a bullet through theirs, suddenly everybodys trying.And the Japanese actually believe Digital Fortress is different? Better than everything else on the market?Tankado may have been shunned, but everybody knows hes a genius. Hes practically a cult simulacrum among hackers. If Tankado says the algorithms unbreakable, its unbreakable.But theyre all unbreakable as far as the public knowsYes Strathmore mused. For the moment.Whats that supposed to mean?Strathmore sighed. Twenty years ago no one imagined wed be breaking twelve-bit stream ciphers. But technology progressed. It always does. software program manufacturers assume at some point computers like TRANSLTR will exist. applied science is progressing e xponentially, and eventually current public-key algorithms will lose their security. Better algorithms will be needed to stay ahead of tomorrows computers.And Digital Fortress is it?Exactly. An algorithm that resists brute(prenominal) force will never become obsolete, no matter how powerful code-breaking computers get. It could become a world standard overnight.Susan pulled in a longsighted breath. God help us, she whispered. Can we make a bid?Strathmore move his head. Tankado gave us our chance. He made that clear. Its too risky anyway if we get caught, were basically admitting that were afraid of his algorithm. Wed be making a public exculpation not only that we have TRANSLTR but that Digital Fortress is immune.Whats the time frame?Strathmore frowned. Tankado planned to announce the highest bidder tomorrow at noon.Susan felt her plump for tighten. Then what?The arrangement was that he would contribute the winner the pass-key.The pass-key?Part of the ploy. Everybodys already got the algorithm, so Tankados auctioning off the pass-key that open ups it.Susan groaned. Of course. It was perfect. Clean and simple. Tankado had encrypted Digital Fortress, and he alone held the pass-key that unlocked it. She found it hard to fathom that somewhere out there-probably scrawled on a piece of paper in Tankados pocket-there was a sixty-four-character pass-key that could end U.S. intelligence hookup forever.Susan suddenly felt ill as she imagined the scenario. Tankado would give his pass-key to the highest bidder, and that company would unlock the Digital Fortress file. Then it probably would embed the algorithm in a tamper-proof chip, and within five years every computer would come preloaded with a Digital Fortress chip. No commercial manufacturer had ever dreamed of creating an encryption chip because normal encryption algorithms eventually become obsolete. But Digital Fortress would never become obsolete with a rotating cleartext function, no brute-force attack wo uld ever find the right key. A new digital encryption standard. From now until forever. Every code unbreakable. Bankers, brokers, terrorists, spies. One world-one algorithm.Anarchy.What are the options? Susan probed. She was well aware that desperate times called for desperate measures, even at the NSA.We cant remove him, if thats what youre asking.It was exactly what Susan was asking. In her years with the NSA, Susan had heard rumors of its loose affiliations with the most skilled assassins in the world-hired hands brought in to do the intelligence communitys cruddy work.Strathmore shook his head. Tankados too smart to leave us an option like that.Susan felt oddly relieved. Hes protected?Not exactly.In hiding?Strathmore shrugged. Tankado go forth Japan. He planned to check his bids by phone. But we know where he is.And you dont plan to make a move?No. Hes got insurance. Tankado gave a copy of his pass-key to an anonymous third party in case anything happened.Of course, Susan marv eled. A protector angel. And I suppose if anything happens to Tankado, the mystery man sells the key?Worse. Anyone hits Tankado, and his participator publishes.Susan looked confused. His partner publishes the key?Strathmore nodded. Posts it on the Internet, puts it in newspapers, on billboards. In effect, he gives it away.Susans look widened. Free downloads?Exactly. Tankado figured if he was dead, he wouldnt need the money-why not give the world a little farewell gift?thither was a long silence. Susan breathed deeply as if to absorb the terrifying truth. Ensei Tankado has created an unbreakable algorithm. Hes holding us hostage.She suddenly stood. Her voice was determined. We must contact Tankado There must be a way to convince him not to release We can offer him triple the highest bid We can clear his name AnythingToo late, Strathmore said. He took a deep breath. Ensei Tankado was found dead this dawning in Seville, Spain.