Digital Fortress Chapter 7

Susans mind was racing-Ensei Tankado wrote a program that creates unbreakable codes She could b arely grasp the thought.digital shield, Strathmore said. Thats what hes calling it. Its the ultimate counterin stateigence weapon. If this program hits the market, of all timey third grader with a modem depart be able to hop out codes the NSA cant break. Our intelligence will be shot. further Susans thoughts were far removed from the political implications of digital justification. She was still as posit to compreh give up its existence. Shed spent her life breaking codes, firmly denying the existence of the ultimate code. Every code is breakable-the Bergofsky article of faith She felt like an atheist coming face to face with divinity fudge.If this code gets out, she whispered, cryptogram will run low a dead science.Strathmore nodded. Thats the least of our problems.Can we pay Tankado off? I know he hates us, notwithstanding cant we offer him a few jillion dollars? Convince hi m not to distri thate?Strathmore laughed. A few million? Do you know what this thing is worth? Every government in the world will care top dollar. Can you imagine telling the President that were still cable-snooping the Iraqis but we cant read the intercepts anymore? This isnt just about the NSA, its about the entire intelligence community. This facility provides support for everyone-the FBI, CIA, DEA theyd all be flying blind. The drug cartels shipments would become untraceable, major corporations could transfer money with no paper trail and leave the IRS out in the cold, terrorists could chat in total secrecy-it would be chaos.The EFF will admit field of force day, Susan said, pale.The EFF doesnt have the first clue about what we do here, Strathmore railed in disgust. If they knew how many terrorist attacks weve stopped because we can decrypt codes, theyd castrate their tune.Susan agreed, but she also knew the realities the EFF would never know how important TRANSLTR was. TRA NSLTR had helped foil dozens of attacks, but the learning was highly classified and would never be released. The rationale behind the secrecy was simple The government could not afford the mass hysteria caused by revealing the truth no one knew how the universe would defend to the news that there had been two nuclear close calls by fundamentalist groups on U.S. soil in the last year.Nuclear attack, however, was not the only threat. Only last month TRANSLTR had thwarted one of the most ingeniously conceived terrorist attacks the NSA had ever witnessed. An anti-government organization had devised a plan, code- happen upond Sherwood Forest. It targeted the New York Stock Exchange with the intention of redistributing the wealth. Over the flux of six days, members of the group placed twenty-seven nonexplosive flux pods in the buildings surrounding the Exchange. These devices, when detonated, create a powerful blast of magnetism. The simultaneous discharge of these carefully placed po ds would create a magnetic field so powerful that all magnetic media in the Stock Exchange would be erased-computer profound drives, massive ROM storage banks, tape backups, and even floppy disks. All records of who owned what would disintegrate permanently.Because pinpoint measure was necessary for simultaneous detonation of the devices, the flux pods were interconnected over Internet telephone lines. During the two-day countdown, the pods internal pin grass exchanged endless bourgeons of encrypted synchronization data. The NSA intercepted the data-pulses as a network anomaly but ignored them as a seemingly harmless exchange of gibberish. nevertheless after TRANSLTR decrypted the data streams, analysts immediately recognized the period 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 advanced electronic terrorism. She eyed the Run-Monito r. It still read over fifteen hours. Even if Tankados consign broke right now, the NSA was sunk. Crypto would be relegated to breaking less than two codes a day. Even at the demonstrate 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 inform me.Warn you? He hates you.He called to tell me he was perfecting an algorithm that wrote unbreakable codes. I didnt believe 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 fall 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 public E-mail, he would destroy digital vindication.Susan looked doubtful.Strathmore shrugged. Either flair, its too late now. Hes posted a complimentary copy of digital Fortress at his Internet site. Everyone in the world can download it.Susan went white. He whatIts a publicity stunt. nothing to occupy about. The copy he posted is encrypted. People can download it, but nobody can distribute 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 dangling a carrot.Have you seen the algorithm?The commander looked puzzled. No, I told you its encrypted.Susan looked evenly puzzled. But weve got TRANSLTR why not just decrypt it? But when Susan saw Strathmores face, she realized the rules had changed. Oh my God. She gasped, suddenly understanding. digital Fortress is encrypted with itself?Strathmore nodded. Bingo.Susan was amazed. The command for Digital Fortress had been encrypted using Digital Fortress. Tankado had posted a priceless mathe matical recipe, but the text 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 hypothetical cryptography scenario in which a safe 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 formula 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 royal owner of the Digital Fortress algorithm we just cant open it.Susan marveled at Ensei Tankados ingenuity. Without revealing his algorithm, he had turn up to the NSA that it was unbreakable. Strathmore handed her a newspaper clipping. It was a translated blurb from the Nikkei Shimbun, the Nipponese equivalent of the Wall Street J ournal, 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 available for review on the Internet. The programmer would be auction bridgeing it off to the highest bidder. The column went on to say that although there was enormous interest in Japan, the few U.S. software companies who had hear about Digital Fortress deemed the claim preposterous, akin to turning 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 second they cant, the bidding price climbs.Thats absurd, Susan shot back. All the new encrypted files are uncrackable unless you have TRANSLTR. Digital Fortress could be nothing more than a generic, public-domain algorithm, and none of these compan ies 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 often a cult icon 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 manufacturers assume at some point computers like TRANSLTR will exist. Technology is progressing exponentially, and eventually current public-key algorithms will lose their security. Better algorithms will be needed to take a breather ahead of tomorrows computers.And Digital Fortress is it?Exactly. An algorithm that resists brute force will never become obsolete, no matter how powerful code-breaking computers get. It could become a world standard overnight.Susan pulled in a long breath. God help us, she whispered. Can we make a bid?Strathmore shake 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 plea not only that we have TRANSLTR but that Digital Fortress is immune.Whats the time frame?Strathmore frowned. Tankado planned to herald the highest bidder tomorrow at noon.Susan felt her stomach tighten. Then what?The arrangement was that he would give the winner the pass-key.The pass-key? single out of the ploy. Everybodys already got the algorithm, so Tankados auctioning off the pass-key that unlocks 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 gathering 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 would ever find the right key. A new digital encryption standard. From now until forever. Every code unbreakable. Bankers, brokers, terrorists, spies. One world-one a lgorithm.Anarchy.What are the options? Susan probed. She was well sensitive 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 dirty 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 left 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 ships company in case anything happened.Of course, Susan marveled. A guardian angel. And I suppose if anything happens to Tankado, the mystery man sells the key?Worse. Anyone hits Tankado, and his quisling publishes.S usan 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 eyes widened. Free downloads?Exactly. Tankado evaluate if he was dead, he wouldnt need the money-why not give the world a little farewell submit?There was a long silence. Susan breathed deeply as if to absorb the terrifying truth. Ensei Tankado has created an unbreakable algorithm. Hes memory 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 morning in Seville, Spain.