[Fwd: IP security relies on both encryption and obfustication]

Hi,

John's email bounced as the email address used was not in the mailing 
list (it is now). I'm posting it below.

Regards,
Alain

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: IP security relies on both encryption and obfustication
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2006 06:35:22 -0500
From: John Willis <jwillis@ftlsystems.com>
To: Alain Vachoux <alain.vachoux@epfl.ch>, 
olivier.rolland@systemsvip.com, jwillis@ftlsystems.com
CC: John Shields <John_Shields@mentor.com>, "1076.1 mailing list" 
<vhdl-ams@server.vhdl.org>, Lance Thomson <lancet@us.ibm.com>, 
vhdl-200x-ft@eda-stds.org

Alain, Oliver, John and members of VHDL-AMS list...

It is perhaps obvious but strangely not being stated here.
The more secure approach is a combination of strong encryption
and obfustication techniques.  With many cypher algorithms, it
is common academic knowledge (I am not breaking the US law by
pointing out (pathetic situation)) the more one knows of the
clear text, the easier it is to break a cipher.  Obfustication
schemes which replace identifiers help.  Stronger obfustication
techniques which re-map the language's keywords are even better
(such as was done with the old PL language series).  If you want
to make VHDL more secure at the expense of slightly slower
lexical scanning, add the capability to re-map keywords.

Example of new concurrent statement where remap is a keyword:
    remap BEGIN COMMENCER;

We are occupied with a large project using VHDL/VHDL-AMS
and I have not had time to follow the earlier discussions,
however it is unclear why there is an implied either / or.
A more secure approach uses both.

Best regards, John

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John Willis                     jwillis@ftlsystems.com
FTL Systems Inc.                FTL Systems UK Ltd.
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