Dabbling in the Cryptographic World (1999)

[timdierks]

https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/crypt.html

[philprx]

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for it is J. Reeds, D. Ritchie, R. Morris, "The Hagelin Cipher Machine (M-209): Cryptanalysis from Ciphertext Alone", unpublished technical memorandum, Bell Laboratories, 1978.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

[wasx]

> 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

[schoen → wasx]

This means that he perceived a threat disguised as politeness.

[pjc50 → wasx]

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

[oldcynic → wasx]

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)

[loup-vaillant → oldcynic]

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.

[acqq]

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

[dang]

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