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Encryption Security

Enigma-like Device Patent Granted - 67 Years Later 124

Posted by Hemos from the pretty-cool dept.
Thanks to Bruce Schneier [?] of Counterpane fame for sending in this tidbit. The US Patent Office has granted William Friedman a patent for an Engima-like device - the catch is that he filed in 1933. Still it's a cool vintage piece of crypto - and I also noticed that a gallery copy of Bruce's new book is on eBay. 'Course, you could wait just a few weeks and buy a new one, but hey - if you gotta have it now, you gotta have it.
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Enigma-like Patent Granted - 67 Years Later More

Enigma-like Patent Granted - 67 Years Later

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  • it's a Patent, Not a Trade Secret (Score:3)

    by efuseekay ( 138418 ) on Monday August 07, 2000 @11:08AM (#872816)
    Well, at least it's a patent, which means that while you are not allowed to use it, you can always poke at it and figure out how to Crack it.

    Besides, who wants to use a code that has lost a war and then some? :)

    So no conspiracy theories here.

    The interesting bit is the 67 years delay. Maybe it's not Enigma they are worried about, it's how they cracked it that's holding it up.

  • Re:BZZT! (Score:3)

    by Ralph Wiggam ( 22354 ) on Monday August 07, 2000 @10:47AM (#872817) Homepage
    The question that bring up is, why did it take 67 years to declassify information about Enigma? This stuff has not been critical to the security of the nation for two generations. Wasn't one of the original machines up for auction on ebay this year? I'm all for keeping secrets in order to protect our country, and I'm all for erring on the side of caution when it comes to those secrets, but this seems rediculous. Does anyone know of a particular aspect of the technology that would require it to be classified until now?

    -B
  • A law firm (Oppedahl & Larson LLP) owns patents.com. There is actually some good stuff there.

    Why are you surprised that there is good stuff there, as if all lawyers were uncapable of higher processes.

    Carl Oppedahl has been active on the field of software patents and the internet since before the web was invented. When it comes to patents, I'd say 99% of us ./ers could learn a lot from him, even if we might disagree with his personal views on the subject.

  • Pet Peeve? It means both. But it only means what you say it means to those who took too many philosophy classes or just know better. It's an idiom.

    See this [everything2.com]. While not definative, it's what most people think it is, and, grammar purists aside, what it's used as is what it becomes. (ex: gay) Trying to keep changes in usage out will kill a language.

  • Think the USPS is slow? Try paying a bill through the mail with a check when you will have the amount in your account the next day. I swear these move faster than email.

    ...no shit. happened the other day. bummer.

  • The guy who invented the laser didn't get his patent until recently.
    We're talking decades and billions of dollars in royalties. CD players, laser pointers, industry equipment -- just because the patent office took their sweet time getting the man his patent.

  • Of course, the other side of NSA patents is... (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07, 2000 @11:16AM (#872822)
    Okay, let's say that the NSA wants a device to solve problem 'A'. They would assign one of their engineers to it, but they're way too busy breaking RC5 (not with Team Slashdot, either...) or listening in on some random New Zealand phone call via Echelon. So they contract it out company 'B'-- completely unclassified.

    Now company 'B' goes out and develops the device, and in the process winds up violating the patents held by companies 'C', 'D', and 'E'. These companies come to company 'B', screaming about patent infringement and lawsuits that will leave future generations in debt. What happens?

    The NSA states that the patents issued are not valid in this case, because the NSA has prior art-- company 'B' is therefore using NSA technology, not civilian technology. When companies 'C', 'D', and 'E' ask for proof, the response is pretty standard: "Sorry, but that's classified information." Companies 'C', 'D', and 'E' are SOL.

    Company 'B' makes a killing selling thousands of units to the NSA, and later markets a *very* similar product to the general public. Except this time, they're paying royalties to 'C', 'D', and 'E'.

    Guess who never really has to license patented technologies?

  • g0t 2007? (Score:1)

    by pohl ( 872 )
    Shouldn't that be "got root"?
  • The "wrong" way makes a whole lot more sense based on the words used to put the phrase together. When you've got a piece of jargon composed of words which make more sense to most people if they mean what they APPEAR to mean, you shouldn't be a bit surprised if people misuse it. IMO, the misuse is the initial creation of the phrase.
  • Eraser = Backspace.....And I wish more people would proofread their posts and use it.
    I have heard the theories...Common usuage equals evolution in the language, so get used to it. As long as you can get your point across, fine.
    While I can grasp those concepts, it seems to me that people with an above average understanding of English find themselves stuck upon these simple mistakes and cannot continue to read the post - neither with respect for the writer, nor with a comprehension of what s/he meant to convey.
    In this case, the general audience does NOT understand (admittedly, I'm giving the general audience a huge benefit of the doubt as to their collective reasoning powers...no apologies). Grammer nazi comments aside, if the "mold you cast" cannot convey your ideas correctly, your ideas are worthless.
  • Sorry to burst your buble but government isn't a business. The ideas of Calvin Cooledge are long past. We learned a valuable leson, that business isn't the only thing in life; hence the relative popularity of intellectual past times like computer science.
  • Given the size of the federal government and how much paperwork and bullshit is involved I'm amazed it still works. To quote bill clinton "The era of big government is over". Right. The government is constantly expanding. I'm not a fan of anything that steals half my income.
  • 18 years before the NSA was founded?!?

    Or so you think it was founded ::dramatic music:: DUN DUN DUUUUUUN!

  • Cryptographic references (Score:4)

    by rjh ( 40933 ) <rjh@sixdemonbag.org> on Monday August 07, 2000 @12:10PM (#872829)
    Alfred J. Menezes, Handbook of Applied Cryptography.

    Schneier, Bruce. Applied Cryptography, Second Edition.

    Kissinger, Henry. Collected writings. If you want to know crypto, you also need to know the political climate which created crypto; and when it comes to Cold War history, nobody tells it like Kissinger.

    The ICSA Guide to Cryptography. Very light, but it's good for a beginner's introduction.

    Kahn, David. The Codebreakers.

    Bamford, James. The Puzzle Palace.

    Gaily, Jean-Loup. The Data Compression Handbook (? on the name; it's been a while).

    Knudson, Jonathan. Java Cryptography.

    Elliote, Rusty (?). Java I/O.

    Halsall, Fred. Can't think of the name for the life of me, but it's a monstrously big book about network communications. Very good stuff, even if it only has one chapter on communications security.
  • Not everything is a conspiracy

    Thats what they want you to believe!

  • his descendants are gonna sue the asses offa everybody!
  • Reminds me of when the post office loses a bag of mail for 50 years behind a desk or something. Don't laugh, its happened.
  • They'll grant a patent on the bubble sort. :)
  • So when will some museum build one of these things
    out of tinkertoys?
  • Not neccessarily the NSA, but obviously some branch of the government (FBI, CIA, Army, Navy, whoever) had to be in charge of encryption, or at least _some_ branch had _some_ people working on encryption. It wouldn't be shocking, to me at least, for the government to act in such a paranoid manner.

    But, as you bring up, how can the US Patent office assign a patent to an ogranization that didn't exist when it was filed?
    --
    I don't follow the pack, but I'll follow a really cute girl.

  • There are certainly stream ciphers that use shift register still in use today. They're wonderfully suited to very fast hardware implementation, have an enormous body of theoretical research supporting them, and take up almost no space at all. Even so, they would not be in violation of the patent.
  • Oh yeah whenever I commit suicide I'm going to bring a suitcase full of clothes with me. Also I'm going to make sure the morgue somehow "loses" all photos of my autopsy.

  • Re:Why so late? (Score:5)

    by freebe ( 174010 ) on Monday August 07, 2000 @10:48AM (#872838) Homepage
    The USPTO uses an advanced inventory system, different from both FIFO (first-in, first-out) and LIFO (last-in, first-out). The new system is called FISH, and is rumoured to stand for First-In, Still-Here...
  • I'm actually just taking the reasonable guess with this "classified" thing, but it seems to me that the NSA's declassification process works at the speed of molasses. Obviously something can't sit in a pile for 67 years - whose pile would it be sitting in? I doubt anybody that worked there in '33 is still there today. It's gotta be a classification thing.
  • I can save you and your great-grandkids some time:

    1) Nothing
    2) Lee Harvey Oswald
    3) Vince Foster

    -B
  • Better yet - I'm building a time capsule so that I can ask my grandkids if they've come up with a cure for rampant paranoia yet...
  • Really many of the events you named are in fact not correct at all and not only that but the events we know as the truth are in fact verifiable with thousands of independent minds.
    Also during the war of 1812 we didn't have the time or the expertise in mathmetics that is currently necessary to do full scale cryptography

  • My guess to the lateness of the patent is the NSA thought encryption should be controlled solely by them, and so they just wrapped the thing up in red tape and left it. Why wait 'til 2000 to let it be patented though? Why not 10-20 years ago when computers were clearly far superior in encryption methods?

    Ummm... Question?

    How could the NSA have suppressed a patent or, for that matter, be assigned a patent, on something that was filed a good 18 years before the NSA was founded?!?


    --

    Greetings New User! Be sure to replace this text with a

  • BTW, how are patent numbers assigned? This will get the "next" number right? You can't examine the series of patent numbers for unexplained "gaps" can you?

    Patent numbers are assigned when the patent is granted, so this patent has a number in the 6 millions. However, even if patents were numbered at the time they were submitted, there are many times more pattents applied for than are granted, as a large number patents are silly, prior art, or just wrong.

    nosilA

  • I'm not sure...
    If I were you, I'd check out www.steveandstevedanceparty.com [steveandst...eparty.com] for FUN and SAFETY! Poodly poodles!
  • Fair comment. I meant no disrespect actually. I was just surprised that a law firm owned the domain, not some crappy dot com company.

    John S. Rhodes
    WebWord.com [webword.com] -- Usability News and Research
  • ...in 2067.

    --

  • Some information and thoughts (Score:4)

    by Signail11 ( 123143 ) on Monday August 07, 2000 @11:24AM (#872849)
    You can read the patent for yourself at http://www.patents.ibm.com/details?&pn=US06097812_ _&s_all=1 complete with cross-references. In my opinion, the reason that best explains why the patent has just been issued now is that back in 1933 when Friedman filed for the patent, the information was immediately classified for a set period of time as a matter of course. The FOIA and related executive orders have mandated automatic declassification after 50 years unless it can be demonstrated that disclosure would have a directly detrimental effected on national security. Oddly enough, cryptoanalytical and cryptographic secrets are *explicitly exempt* from this automatic declassification system. Moreover, it's probably quite likely that de/reclassification efforts rank rather low among the NSA priorities. It's entirely possible that they simply never got around to it until now.

    Now for the more speculative reason. The academic/civilian cryptographic research community has never successfully developed a general method for cryptanlysing rotor machines; basically, the limits of what we know how to break is the Enigma with knowledge of the rotor wirings and the SIGABA/ECM systems with knowledge of their rotor wirings. True, there have been vague descriptions of the cryptanalysis of Purple, but the key steps (ie. reconstruction of wirings, and far more importantly, determination of the general structure of the machine without obtaining it) have never been declassified. Rotor machines were very commonplace until about the early sixties; moreover, their descendants, shift register based stream ciphers were probably in use to this day. It's pretty safe to say that there are entire categories of cryptanalytic and cipher design techniques that we are ignorant about.

    The sci.crypt newsgroup has a long thread about the patent which can be read, among other places, at http://www.remarq.com/read/cryptsci/q_RGaGOxKZQUC- -Jw#LR.
  • The british were the first to capture an enigma device from the germans. Enigma encryption is extremely weak anyway. And as most of you should no the average person in depression era USA didn't really need encryption in this manner. They were far too busy with keeping themselves fed and housed to worry about that.
  • As noted elsewhere, this device was actually patented by the NSA. Now, the big question is why'd they bother after 67 years? <PARANOIA> Could the NSA use this patent to shut down other, non-governmental, forms of encryption? Is this part of a plot by the nefarious Clinton administration to obtain leverage over these companies so that they can get their treasured 'key escrow' scheme? </PARANOIA>
  • My guess is they just automatically sit on whatever they know for however long their allowed to, regardless. From their point of view, that's simply erring on the side of caution.
  • You must be using Exchange.
    Only where I have no choice in the matter of email client; e.g. at work.
  • Though this may be marked redundant- others have supposed this- this is a confirmation- if a patent was initially classified, once it has been declassified, it shows up on the USPTO's records as new, though any patent protection has long since expired, since there is a limit that applies to the amount of time that has passed since the initial application for the patent.

    I have heard of people getting deluged from the patent "submission" scams that send bulk mail to each "new" patent award, even though the patent was issued 30+ years ago, and it was only just declassified.
  • If Vince Foster had had a gun he'd be alive today...
  • Instead of being a grammer nazi try to conceive that ideas and not the mold that they are cast in is the important thing ok? Of course you never had to use the eraser on any of your pencils right?

  • Re:But the NSA didn't exist in 1933!!!! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Maybe because the NSA was really founded during the war of 1812, and was successful at "virtually not existing" for a long time before something finally leaked a century and a half later, and they had to pretend to "create" it.

    Remember Ken Starr's investigation into Clinton's shenanigans? That investigation actually started on May 17 1913.

    And guess when Al Gore invented The Internet? July 23 1939.

    Wanna know when Prohibition was really enacted? January 5, 1868.

    And guess when Windows 2000 service pack 1 shipped? That's right: August 2 1990.

    David Koresh was actually killed in Waco on November 11 1974.

    Rodney King was beat up in Los Angeles on June 2 1951.

    O.J. Simpson killed his wife on February 6, 1933. He was acquitted on September 30 1934. He was found liable in the civil judgement on March 14 1936.

    Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese on December 6th or 7th (depending on who you ask) 1929, but the US Government didn't find out about it and declare war until February 3 1930, and were able to conceal it from the public for 11 years. Hiroshima was nuked on December 11, 1941.

    Britney Spears got a boob job on August 7 1972. She gave a blowjob to a media company strategic planner on December 3 1973, and her first album went platinum on December 4 1973. She was dropped by her label on April 27 1975 and entered the pornography business on May 3 1975. She made her last porno movie on November 22 1982, declared bankruptcy on August 17 1985, and committed suicide on September 5 1987. We're just watching the pre-recording.

    The Apollo 11 crew filmed the moon landings on January 10 1968, then did a retake on December 17 1968. Man did eventually land on the moon, though: on January 28 1986. A suitable distraction was needed to keep people from noticing, though, so a film of a space shuttle exploding was shown, even though actually the Challenger blew up on May 4 1977.

    The electronic digital computer was invented by a monk in Florence on June 4 1369. FORTRAN was invented some time in 1385 (exact date unknown), Java was invented on January 6 1386, and a complete Ada compiler, written in shell script and only requiring 64 bytes of memory, was finished on December 3 1510, even though Ada wasn't invented until some time in May 1771. Interestingly, former president JFK served on the committee, until his assassination on November 22 1801.

    Now you know the truth.

  • As in the german code machine? Um... Hedy know about this?
  • Besides being an expert cryptographer, Friedman was the world expert on the Voynich Manuscript [att.com], which is probably the closest thing in the real world to those weird books mentioned in Lovecraft's stories. Perhaps granting this patent is only the government's way of belatedly thanking Friedman for his work in preventing the Great Old Ones from returning.
  • Can I use it to get past the government and is it available for sale outside the US? I hope it's compatible with pgp.

  • You know what happened (Score:3)

    by Sloppy ( 14984 ) on Monday August 07, 2000 @12:26PM (#872861) Homepage Journal

    You just know that in 1961 some guy who was cleaning out his desk, due to retiring, saw this application which had slipped behind the drawer, and said, "Oh dear." He guiltily looked around, and then stuffed it back into the desk.

    Then 20 years later a successor found it, and though, "Oh shit. Well, if anyone find out that we just sat on this patent for 48 years, we're going to look bad. I think I'll put this off." He kept putting it off, wishing it didn't exist, and the longer he waited, the worse it would look when the word finally got out.

    His successor played the same procrastination game.

    That person finally had a heart attack and died this year. The person who inherited his unfinished work was about to "accidently" lose it too, but NSA threatened to release his web browser history to the public, so he gave in and approved it.


    ---
  • And you'll live like Caesar!

    But what you really need is a patent for the number 13.
  • The US govt taking 4ever to do anything, at least they are faster than the usps.
  • sounds like the riddler decided to take over the USPTO. ;)

    pretty interesting read of a patent, Aug. 1, 2000 / July 25, 1933... so when does it expire?
    kick some CAD [cadfu.com]
  • The US govt taking 4ever to do anything, at least they are faster than the usps.

    Think the USPS is slow? Try paying a bill through the mail with a check when you will have the amount in your account the next day. I swear these move faster than email.
  • In particular, if you use a term like this in a case where you could have meant either thing, you're not communicating *anything* - unless everyone is careful about usage.

    "begs the question" is a term of art. It is a technical term describing a specific logical fallacy. Using it in another way is like using "logic" to mean "intuition", or using "animal" to mean "an object which moves". It makes it harder for a reader to be sure of what you meant.

    Computers are not the only things which will understand you better if you're precise in your use of language.

    Of course, if you don't know what you mean either, no big loss - and this is the impression people will get of you if you are careless with language.
  • I think it's called "galley copy."
    --
  • Too bad they didn't do this with a couple notable software patents.... the world would be a better (well, ok, more convinient) place.

    -$lacker

  • Why so late? (Score:3)

    by cybercuzco ( 100904 ) on Monday August 07, 2000 @10:36AM (#872869) Homepage Journal
    This begs the question: what took them so long? I know government is slow, but this is rediculous. I think the key to the answer is that the patent is granted to the united states "represented by the national security agency". I wonder what the NSA has in the pipes for patents nowadays, if the even do that still. Another question, why go to all the trouble of patenting something like this anyways, its not like theres a huge market for enigma or anything.

  • What patents will they be granting 67 years from now I wonder?


    ------------------------------------------------ ------------

  • The Poles obtained a commercial Enigma and were the able to analyze and crack the military Enigma in 1933. While the British did a lot of important work on the Enigma, the Poles, esp. Marian Rejewski, deserve most of the credit for cracking the Enigma. Too many books and articles ignore their work.

  • Patents, Patents, Patents (Score:4)

    by webword ( 82711 ) on Monday August 07, 2000 @10:37AM (#872872) Homepage
    A law firm (Oppedahl & Larson LLP) owns patents.com [patents.com]. There is actually some good stuff there. And of course, there is always Freepatents.org [freepatents.org], IBM's Gallery of Obscure Patents [ibm.com], and O'Reilly's list of Controversial Patents [oreillynet.com].

  • Even better... (Score:3)

    by MostlyHarmless ( 75501 ) <artdent@freeshe[ ]org ['ll.' in gap]> on Monday August 07, 2000 @10:37AM (#872873)
    That's not all. In fact, rumor has it that they may be patenting the bicycle as well sometime around 2013.[*]

    [*] And then they will promptly sue all bicycle owners and bicycle manufacturers for infringement.
    --
  • Maybe those inventions havn't really been created yet?
    Also it is rather impossible from a purely statistical point of view that there was just one person with the idea in the entire world.
    That's why all the crap about mind control/telepathy/CIA's use thereof, etc aren't really possible.
    I think with the invention of the internet crackpots have increased in number.
  • By suddenly approving a patent that they've sat on for 67 years, does this mean that the government is claiming an exclusive, non-reproducable right to use the technology described in the patent?
    In other words, since the US Government is the owner of the patent, do they claim to have control over any form of crypto based on it?
    Or is this just the results of a routine declassification review? Maybe the guy or his heirs (assuming he's dead, he's gotta be pushing 100 if he was a boy genius) just wanted some credt?

  • BZZT! (Score:5)

    by freebe ( 174010 ) on Monday August 07, 2000 @10:37AM (#872876) Homepage
    First of all, they granted the NSA the patent, not this guy. If you look at the "applicant" field you'll see that it says "The United States as represented by the NSA". Secondly, that explains why it took 67 years - the information in it was classified(!) and it took 67 years for it to be declassified to the point where the patent could be granted. Gotta hand it to the NSA.
  • Unless your uber rich that's a little exagerated. Also there's social security that you will eventually get in some form.
  • This ought to show those nasty Nazis a thing or two.

    Bye bye, and buy bonds!

    Viv
    -----------
  • 1) Fox Mulders sister crash landed.
    2) J. Edgar Hoover
    3) Hillary Clinton

    "I will gladly pay you today, sir, and eat up

  • Waitiminit... now this smells fishy - I didn't actually catch that until you said something! Something's definitely wrong here - how can the patent be assigned to an organization that didn't exist when the patent was filed for? Or did the US Govt. ask for the patent, and then assign the patent to the NSA (because that's who deals with encryption now)?

  • Re:If only we had known about this earlier... (Score:4)

    by Detritus ( 11846 ) on Monday August 07, 2000 @01:59PM (#872881) Homepage
    I wonder how patent lawyers would have fared against the German army.

    Why don't we give it a try? :-)

  • ROT-13 (Score:3)

    by Segfault 11 ( 201269 ) on Monday August 07, 2000 @10:56AM (#872882) Homepage
    Enigma machine? SSL? Bah. Just you wait until my patents for ROT-13 encryption clears the U.S. patent board. Nobody will be able to tell a dirty joke on USENET without paying me a royalty, and I plan to wring it out of them, just like Unisys.

    Ol ernqvat guvf, lbh unir vasevatrq ba zl cngrag.
  • What do you think, will this mean that the NSA will go after UC or whoever authored the crypt(1) utility in ole Unix for licensing fees, now that they hold the Enigma patent? (I'm kidding, okay, kidding)!

    WWJD -- What Would Jimi Do?

  • Yeah... what he wrote means either 'got toot' (ROFL) or 'got zoot' (WTF?).
  • I've heard it's possible for a patent to not be granted if it's in conflict with national security. I gather that the device being patented then gets locked up in that back room we saw in the first Indiana Jones movie, along with the Ark of the Covenant, Lightbulbs that last Forever, 100 MPG Carbeurators, etc. I assume the inventor is either banned from discussing the invention or is hired by the government to develop it further.

    Perhaps this just got declassified recently, which got the beurocratic wheels turning. Gotta wonder what effect this patent will have on modern day crypto...

  • ...should check out his very excellent book Applied Cryptography [amazon.com], which is a great introduction, reference, and all-around good read for coders who would like to know more about cryptography in general and how to implement common algorithms. It's got the history, theory, protocols -- really a nice thing to have. And unlike many of these type of books, it is perfectly approachable to those of us who are programming wizards but never really cared for mathematics.

    IIRC the book's examples are in C. A decent companion text is Java Cryptography [amazon.com] (O'Reilly), which while light on theory, is a fairly good tutorial in use of the java.security package's crytographic classes. Unfortunately the book is rather shallow (read the reviews on Amazon for elaboration) and also rather dated; do not expect to find coverage of JCE 1.2 [sun.com] (Java Cryptography Extension) or other recent (year < 1.0) releases.

    I'd love to hear others' favorite cryptology-related books.

    ---------///----------
    All generalizations are false.

  • Yah, it takes them forever to do anything - unless you're a large corporation like... oh, pick one at random...for sake of arguement, let's say Amazon. They can get a patent on something amazingly NON-patentable in less than a year, but this machine took 67 years. Amazing.

  • Re:My new patent (Score:4)

    by evanbd ( 210358 ) on Monday August 07, 2000 @11:25AM (#872888)
    I have a decryption algorithm. It seems to fail at exact decryption, but seems to get the general gist across.

    313373 5cr1pt k1ddi3 -> Can someone help me with this install script?

    g0t 2007 -> still working on this one. As best I can tell, it's gibberish.

    m3 hax0r 0x900d -> Red Hat works! wow! and I have root access! this kicks ass!

    ---

  • However, even if patents were numbered at the time they were submitted, there are many times more pattents applied for than are granted, as a large number patents are silly, prior art, or just wrong.
    Although none of these prevents them being granted, of course. :)

  • Re:Minor nit... (Score:3)

    by Bloody Pulp ( 101306 ) on Monday August 07, 2000 @11:00AM (#872890) Journal
    You are correct. The ebay [ebay.com] site has "galley" not "gallery". The term is galley copy or galley proof. Check dictionary.com [dictionary.com] for the term galley proof [dictionary.com].

    galley proof
    n. Printing

    A proof taken from composed type before page composition to allow for the detection and correction of errors.

  • I think the decryption algorithm is best summarized by:

    #include <fcntl.h> /* Your mileage may vary, check open(2) for details */

    void main() {char c;int f;f=open("/dev/random",O_RDONLY);while (read(f,&c,sizeof(char))>0) {c=(c%52);if (c26) c+='a';else if (c42) c-=26,c+='a';else c-=42,c+='0';printf("%c",c);}}

  • First of all, they granted the NSA the patent, not this guy.

    I thought "this guy" was William Friedman. That's kind of like saying "some dude" in an article about cars when you meant "Henry Ford." Friedman was quite the crypto boy--in fact, many of his books are still available from Aegean Park Press [aegeanparkpress.com]. I highly recommend ELEMENTS OF CRYPTANALYSIS--it will really help you wreck the Cryptoquips....

  • It was probably original assigned to whatever part of the War department eventually split off to form the NSA. These departments rarely sprang up from nothing.

  • Why is the government patenting *ANYTHING*?? (Score:3)

    by andyturk ( 92537 ) on Monday August 07, 2000 @11:50AM (#872894)

    IANAL, but I thought patent law was there to encourage innovation. Commercial companies patent something that took you a long time to develop and then get a chance to recoup your investment.

    The gov't patenting something seems like an abuse of the system. We don't really want the gov't to be in the business of licensing patents do we?

    Arrgh! It's bad enough that the PTO has control over which brain-dead ideas get a 17-year window of protection, but giving "them" the ability to lock down ideas is just too scary.

    Can you imagine what the world would be like if the U.S. Gov't had the one-click shopping patent instead of Amazon?!

  • Re:But the NSA didn't exist in 1933!!!! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    So do we _really_ know that the NSA was established in 1948? (;
  • Try the Japanese "purple" cipher. That one was the hardest for the US to crack. Also computer viruses cannot easily cross computer platforms and OSs and totally render them useless. That is the stuff of hollywood
  • That's great but is it themeable? Does it come(?) in glow-in-the-dark or extra large?
  • Now we should all quit using email, and encode our messages this way. Carnivore won't stand a chance.
  • the Voynich Manuscript (or "VMS," for short)

    Well, THAT certainly explains a lot!
    Now I wonder what ancient, esoteric, black art gave us EBCDIC?

  • "In my opinion, the reason that best explains why the patent has just been issued now is that back in 1933 when Friedman filed for the patent, the information was immediately classified for a set period of time as a matter of course. The FOIA and related executive orders have mandated automatic declassification after 50 years unless it can be demonstrated that disclosure would have a directly detrimental effected on national security." Sorry, but 30 years after 1933 would be 1983, in which case the patent ought to haben been in the open for over 10 years now. Classification (in wartime no surprise) would not have held water then, as much more efficient algorithms existed then. -- penI'In 'ej pechep The Roach (www.roach.demon.nl)

  • More on Friedman's inventions (Score:4)

    by Colin Simmonds ( 4017 ) on Monday August 07, 2000 @12:54PM (#872906) Journal

    According to The Codebreakers by David Kahn, this must be one of several cryptographic-related inventions Friedman made. In 1956, Congress gave Friedman $100,000 in compensation for the profits lost because several of his inventions were classified. On page 391, Kahn says:

    Involved were nine inventions made from 1933 to 1944, two with Rowlett's aid, though the bill was not limited to them. Two were so secret that no patent applications had ever been filed. Four are held in secrecy in the Patent Office: three of these pertained to the Converter M-134-C, a rotor machine, and one to the Converter M-228. Three have been issued as patents: a strip form of the Jefferson cylinder; the Converter M-325, another rotor machine; and a facsimile enciphering system.

    I presume that this is the first of the four patents held in the Patent Office, which implies that three more will appear over the next few years. This is one of the rotor machines, but I'm not sure which of them it is. I'm really curious about the inventions so secret that they never had a patent application for them.

    Near as I can tell from a quick glance through the book, in 1933 Friedman would have been working for a cryptographic section of the U.S. Army Signal Corps, to which I suppose the NSA is today's successor.

  • The United States could have used "Patent Infringment" as an excuse to enter World War II.

    I wonder how patent lawyers would have fared against the German army.

    Donny
  • The actual joke is "Did you hear Amazon.com is going to change their name? Yeah...they're changing to Amazon.org because aparently they're a non-profit." I got a few good laughs out of that one a while ago. Now that I think about it, if turing a profit was a real requirment of a .com address, the TLD would consist entirely of Ebay and porn.

    -B
  • There is also Open Patents [openpatents.org] where some guy is creating a GPL-like patent-pool structure for patents.

  • My paranoid rant (Score:3)

    by gunner800 ( 142959 ) on Monday August 07, 2000 @01:06PM (#872914) Homepage
    Please note that I have no real-world knowledge of the NSA or governmental classified info practices, and my opinions should be weighed with that in mind.

    I studied crypto at college last year and saw diagrams, algorithm analysis, and even photos of the Enigma machines. This information is not secret, or even hard to come by, and it hasn't been for a long time.

    And yet this patent was only recently made public because of "classified" info.

    This just illustrates that our own government intentionally restricts information and misleads us. FOIA my ass.


    My mom is not a Karma whore!

  • Futurama (Score:2)

    by rw2 ( 17419 )
    Did anyone see Futurama last night? This patent must have been at the bottom of the pile!
  • Blockquoth the poster:
    there are many times more pattents applied for than are granted, as a large number patents are silly, prior art, or just wrong.
    Of course, just stick an "i", or an "e", or an "internet" on the front of such patents and being "silly, prior art, or just wrong" no longer suffices to deny a patent. :)
  • First: It's a _galley_ copy, not a "gallery" copy. It's a pre-publication proof, sent to book reviewers and others in the trade so they can prepare reviews and marketing materials in advance of the book's shelf appearance.

    Second, if you request a galley copy, it's considered quite unethical to sell it -- doubly so before the publication date. OTOH, if the seller received the copy unsolicited, I see no reason not to sell it. :)

    --Tom Geller, Editor of Bisexuali ty: A Reader and Sourcebook [barnesandnoble.com].

  • My new patent (Score:4)

    by slickwillie ( 34689 ) on Monday August 07, 2000 @11:06AM (#872921)
    I just received a patent on my encryption engine. It translates plain English into undecipherable Hacklish. For example,

    elite script kiddie -> 313373 5cr1pt k1ddi3
    got milk? -> g0t 2007?
    I'm a uber hacker -> m3 hax0r 0x900d

    I'm currently working on the decryption algorithm, anyone wanna help?
  • Way ahead of you. I've already patented the extra-secure double-rot13 encryption.
  • Salomaa: Public Key Cryptography

    I haven't read much cryptography books (in fact, nothing except this one and the first edition of Schneier's book), so I'm not an expert. But it was a good text book for our university course on cryptography. Doing cryptanalysis was one of the more interesting homeworks! The book puts an emphasis on theoretic background (it's one of the things LaTeX is great for, with all of these formulas ;-)).

    If you want to read a cryptography-related novel, I can recommend Stephenson's Cryptonomicon. I guess most /. readers know it anyway, so I just mention it for the sake of completeness.
  • And yet this patent was only recently made public because of "classified" info.

    The "classified info" was probably the NSA itself. Until recently, all information about it was classified, including its name and initials.

    Kind of like Area 51. It doesn't officially exist, in spite of the signs authorizing use of deadly force on trespassers.
  • Rotor machines were very commonplace until about the early sixties; moreover, their descendants, shift register based stream ciphers were probably in use to this day.
    Hmm. interesting thought - if there are any shift-register based machines left, are they suddenly in violation of this patent, and do they get to claim back royalties on them?
    --

  • There are lots of obvious reasons that declassification works very slowly. Some simple ones:

    • Budget Any government agency has limited funds- even NSA. Declassifying documents has a pretty low priority, so there aren't as many people working on declassification as classification.
    • Ass Covering Nobody ever got fired for deciding that something was too hot to release. OTOH, people do get fired for releasing things they shouldn't have.
    • Security To work on declassifying documents, you have to have clearance high enough to read them. Trustworthy people are hard to find, so it seems like a waste to put them to work declassifying instead of "real" work. See Budget, above.

  • Well,NSA and DOD get a crack at determining if a Patent Application has "Classified" material. If it is, they require the issuing of a secrecy order. The application is forwared to a special security group (used to be Group 220, don't know what they are called now) that had extra security in place...even Examiners from outside Group 220 had to sign in and out when visiting the secure area of the group.

    The application can be prosecuted to allowance, but then could not be issued until the secrecy order was rescinded by the agency/department that ordered the original order.

    i don't think that the agency, as a matter of policy, could confiscate the invention, or force an assignment of it, at least without compensation to the original owner.

    secrecy orders are supposed to be reviewed periodically, but, as a practical matter, "National Security" almost always prevails. Of course, in many cases, the invention, if it had any value when it was filed, is probably worthless after such a long time; not sure if you could take the Govt to the Claims Court to be compensated.

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