>Oh, by the way, DEC obtained a bunch of patents too. One of these patents covered sending an encrypted session key in the header that was encrypted by a key know only to the recipient. This provides some interesting optimizations for hardware implementations. This function was forced into the IEEE 802.10 Standard for Interoperable Lan Standard (SILS) as an optional user or "management defined field". It was inserted ostensibly for labeling to support filtering at bridges, but in reality no other vendor supported this feature. There is now no documentation of the DEC usage of this field in the SILS standard, but the field still is documented in the standard (last I checked..). This is an interesting example of embedding patented technologies as options into a standard. Paul -------------------------------------------------------------- Paul Lambert Director of Security Products Oracle Corporation Phone: (415) 506-0370 500 Oracle Parkway, Box 659410 Fax: (415) 413-2963 Redwood Shores, CA 94065 palamber@us.oracle.com --------------------------------------------------------------
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- To: Steven,Bellovin,smb@research.att.com
- Subject: Re: UUNET Network Encryption Patents
- From: "Joe Tardo " <ipsec-approval@neptune.tis.com>
- Date: 19 Jun 96 10:16:45
- Cc: ipsec@tis.com
The DESNC was ethernet only. The 'wart in the line' encryptor used a chip that did both ISO TLSP and IPv4 transport mode encryption. Both were intended to be 'transparent', but the chip mainly did streaming crypto operations, and worked in conjunction with host drivers. Oh, by the way, DEC obtained a bunch of patents too. I don't remember all the numbers or claims or if any apply here, hopefully not, but, then, I'm no patent lawyer. At 11:11 AM 6/19/96 -0400, Steven Bellovin wrote: >Something else worth checking -- in the late '80s, DEC was selling a >bump-in-the-cord Ethernet encryptor --- called the DESNC, if I recall >correctly. It was completely transparent to the hosts involved, and >did its encryption based on the addresses in the Ethernet header. > > = ========================================================= = Joe Tardo Voice: 408-524-2990 Raptor Systems, Inc. 1250 Oakmead Parkway, Suite 210 Fax: 408-524-2988 Sunnyvale,Ca. 94088-3599 = ========================================================= =
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