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Mailing List Logs for ShadowRN

Message no. 1
From: Tzeentch tzeentch666@*********.net
Subject: Mobile Phone Encryption and STU/STE and other stuff
Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2000 11:18:59 -0700
I was looking up some stuff on NES's for a mini-research project and saw
this on Motorolas page. I never saw these used when I was in, but I bet the
officers are drooling over it ;)

http://www.motorola.com/GSS/SSTG/ISSPD/Secure_Telecom/CipherTAC_2000.html

In Shadowrun game stats I would recommend:

CipherTAC Secure Cellular Phone
Concealability: 4
Weight: .1
Availability: 24/10 days
Legality: 2-Z
Cost: 10,000Y
Street Index: 3
The CipherTAC system consists of two modules, the commercialy available
MicroTAC cellular phone from Motorola and a CipherTAC 2000 security module
that plugs into the phone between the handset and battery. This security
module gives the phone full STU-III (Secure Telephone Unit, Third
Generation) capability.

STU-III is purely a point to point encryption and will not handle the
bandwidth needed for decking since it is designed purely for audio
communication (and to be fair when encrypted its hard to understand what
people are saying!) and very limited data transfer (primarily for FAXing -
which is UNGODLY slow!). In a desperate situation where someone is using a
dialup with STU-III equipment treat the bandwidth as .001MePS.

The STU-III encryption is Rating 8 Broadcast Encryption (p. 289, SR3) and
the cellular phone is a standard cellular unit (p. 287, SR3) with a Device
Rating of 2. The phone has a battery life of 3 hours. Operating in secure
mode reduces the active battery life of the unit by 25% and in standby mode
the unit can remain on for 24 hours. The unit can accept all standard
cellphone accessories.

All STU-III units will eventually be replaced by the STE (Secure Terminal
Equipment) standard and will utilize the Fortezza encryption scheme (it's
something of a joke in the military about how long this has been delayed -
it was supposedly due "next month" over 4 years ago!) and is explicitely
designed for data transfer at up to ISDN speeds. If you need higher speeds
get a SIRPNet drop you bums! In this setup the CryptoTAC security module
will be designed to accept a KRYPTON PCMCIA Fortezza card. This will
theoretically provide a secure communications medium for classifications up
to and including TS-SCI (Top Secret- Secret Compartmentalized Information).
These keys are tied to a specific STE terminal and are treaetd as
unclassified material once "tied" to a specific unit. Before that they are
treated at the classification that the keycard is rated for. For game
purposes treat this as a Rating 10+ Broadcast Encryption unit. For game
purposes the unit has a maximum data bandwidth of 5 MePS. It has a built-in
Sensor 1, Body 1 persona program.

Encryption Level General Level of Classification
1 Hahah!
2-5 Unclassified/Confidential
6-7 Confidential/NOFORN
8-9 Secret
10 Secret/NOFORN
11+ Top Secret

Kenneth
"On two occasions I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the
machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to
apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a
question."
-- Charles Babbage
Message no. 2
From: DemonPenta@***.com DemonPenta@***.com
Subject: Mobile Phone Encryption and STU/STE and other stuff
Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2000 14:40:16 EDT
OK Tzeentch...beautiful. But what's all those classification thingies
mean?:-) (If we're going to use such stuff in SR....EXPLAIN THAT!)

John
Message no. 3
From: Richard Swen rswen@****************.com
Subject: Mobile Phone Encryption and STU/STE and other stuff
Date: Tue, 01 Aug 2000 12:22:13 -0700
At 02:40 PM 8/1/2000 -0400, you wrote:
>OK Tzeentch...beautiful. But what's all those classification thingies
>mean?:-) (If we're going to use such stuff in SR....EXPLAIN THAT!)
>
Those classification thingies deal with the sensitivity of the
material being communicated over the voice circuit.

Encryption Level General Level of Classification
1 Hahah!
2-5 Unclassified/Confidential
6-7 Confidential/NOFORN
8-9 Secret
10 Secret/NOFORN
11+ Top Secret

The General level of classification generally deals with material that
if compromised will cause some level of danger to the US Government or
it's Alies. The Compromise of "Confidential" material may cause some
harm. The Compromise of "Secret" material will cause harm. The
Compromise of "Top Secret" material will great harm. As to the
classification of NOFORN that requires that the material not be shown
to a foriegn national. However, I feel that the following
classification levels would be more apporpriate.

Encryption Level General Level of Classification
1 Unclassified/Hahah!
2-5 Confidential
6-7 Confidential/NOFORN
8-9 Secret
10 Secret/NOFORN
11+ Top Secret

Thank you for the information.

Richard Swen

Further Reading

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Disclaimer

These messages were posted a long time ago on a mailing list far, far away. The copyright to their contents probably lies with the original authors of the individual messages, but since they were published in an electronic forum that anyone could subscribe to, and the logs were available to subscribers and most likely non-subscribers as well, it's felt that re-publishing them here is a kind of public service.

Thwap!