Chinese Cryptologists Get Invitations to a U.S. Conference, but No Visas

NY Times ^ | August 17, 2005 | JOHN MARKOFF

[neverdem]

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 16 - Last year a Chinese mathematician, Xiaoyun Wang, shook up the insular world of code breakers by exposing a new vulnerability in a crucial American standard for data encryption. On Monday, she was scheduled to explain her discovery in a keynote address to an international group of researchers meeting in California.

But a stand-in had to take her place, because she was not able to enter the country. Indeed, only one of nine Chinese researchers who sought to enter the country for the conference received a visa in time to attend.

Although none of the scientists were officially denied visas by the United States Consulate, officials at the State Department and National Academy of Sciences said this week that the situation was not uncommon.

Lengthy delays in issuing visas are now routine, they said, particularly for those involved in sensitive scientific and technical fields.

The visa snag angered organizers of the annual meeting of the International Cryptology Conference, who argued that restrictions originally created to prevent the transfer of advanced technologies from the United States are now having the opposite effect.

"It's not a question of them stealing our jobs," said Stuart Haber, a Hewlett-Packard computer security expert who is program chairman for the meeting, Crypto 2005, being held this week in Santa Barbara. "We need to learn from them, but we are shooting ourselves in the foot."

Mr. Haber and other researchers stressed that progress is made in the field of cryptography by continually investigating existing algorithms and systems for weaknesses, in efforts like Ms. Wang's. Among scholars and software engineers, finding such obscure logical flaws is considered a badge of honor and not a hostile act.

Ms. Wang, a mathematician at Tsinghua University in Beijing, and her student Hongbo Yu were scheduled to...

[sourcery]

From the article, the problem is that it takes at least two months for such visas to be approved--a fact which is clearly stated on official State Department websites. Apparently, neither the conference organizers nor the invited researchers took that fact into account.

Nevertheless, one wonders why there must be such a long delay, when the only result is that knowledge is kept out of the country. Something's wrong with this picture.

[neverdem]

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[hombre_sincero]

We should always invite our most dangerous enemy into the center of our most guarded cyphers!

That ranks almost as stupid as Clintoon bringing in the chi-coms into our nuclear weapons research facilities, giving them our most up to date satellite communications systems and missile guidance systems.

Have you learned Mandarin yet?

[cryptical]

We should always invite our most dangerous enemy into the center of our most guarded cyphers!

This is all civilian work, and therefore unclassified. The conference proceedings are freely available.

[SAJ]

Understand this about assorted codes, cyphers, and similar encryptions.

Unless the coded, cyphered, and/or encrypted texts are encoded, encyphered, and/or encrypted in a fully and demonstrably **random** manner, they can and will -- given enough effort -- always be cracked.

No new news here at all.

[Buddy B]

CRYPTO 2005  |  The 25th Annual International Cryptology Conference

August 14-18, 2005
Santa Barbara, California, USA

[sourcery]

We should always invite our most dangerous enemy into the center of our most guarded cyphers!

Yes, especially when they are coming (as is in this instance) to show us how our most guarded cyphers can be easily broken.

[Fabozz]

"Nevertheless, one wonders why there must be such a long delay, when the only result is that knowledge is kept out of the country."

Because the people at ICE (the successor to the INS) are as incompetent, lazy and priggish a group of government bureaucrats as you'll find. It astonishes me the number of conservatives here who (rightly) despise the IRS and the DMV but turn around and expect ICE to be a paragon of efficiency.

[Kuehn12]

This is serious, for example there is a encryption that guides frequency hop radios and other military communication. Communication inside the the White House via Secure Telephone Units most likely encrypted with a pretty advance code. Some of you have seen the movie Sneakers, "No more Secrets". Every code nation has probably been looking for that one key to crack every code of an enemy nation. I hope we found this vulnerability and fixed it. Encryption is the key to keeping secrets.

[SAJ]

If your views about secure encryption are derived from that silly-ass film ''Sneakers'', why, then A) you're welcome to your views, and B) please note that the field (I hesitate to use the term ''science'') of encryption is just a trifle more complex than that film would indicate.

FReegards to you!

[Kuehn12]

Well yeah, I was only using a popular cultural reference to make my point. By the way, film makers do some research for their films. Films tend to be a sensational form of truth wrapped in exaggeration. There may never be a device that can crack any code that is given. The underlying premise of the film is the dream of every intelligence agency, which is to strip the enemies ability to secure its information.