STU-III is a family of secure telephones introduced in 1987 by the NSA for use by the United States government, its contractors, and its allies. STU-III desk units look much like typical office telephones, plug into a standard telephone wall jack and can make calls to any ordinary phone user (with such calls receiving no special protection, however). When a call is placed to another STU-III unit that is properly set up, one caller can ask the other to initiate secure transmission (or, colloquially, to "go secure"). They then press a button on their telephones and, after a 15 second delay, their call is encrypted to prevent eavesdropping. There are portable and militarized versions and most STU-IIIs contained an internal modem and RS-232 port for data and fax transmission.
KSD-64As, KEY, and CIKs
KSD-64A stands for Key Storage Device with storage of 64,000 bits of information. The device is a key-shaped piece of plastic that contains a computer chip called an EEPROM. The EEPROM chip hasElectronically Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory. The device is inserted like a key into a slot in the STU-III and turned to engage its computer chip with the electronic components of the STU-III. Since the KSD-64A is an EEPROM, NSA can use its special equipment to program it, erase the information it contains, and reprogram it with other information.
Key Storage Device, KSD-64A
It is incidental, even confusing perhaps, that the KSD-64A is key-shaped. It is in fact named for the cryptographic information, called "key" by security professionals, that it often stores. "Key" is a unique sequence of random bits used to set up and change the encoding and decoding function of a security device so that it can encode, decode, and authenticate information. It is this meaning of "key" that is used in the following terms:
SEED KEY - Key that is loaded into a STU-III terminal, enabling it to electronically obtain its operational key during a rekey phone call.
OPERATIONAL KEY - Key that is loaded into a STU-III terminal, enabling it to make direct secure calls to other STU-IIIs.
Target coordinates set. Ready to transmit.
Going secure...
00111001 10000111 11101100 11111000 11111110
00001100 00100111 11100100 01100100 10000010
00010110 11000000 00000001 11110110 10111010
00000111 11011000 11101100 00000010 10111010
00010011 11100000 10110001 10011000 10111010
00000110 00111001 11000100 01111100 10000010
00111010 10110010 01000100 10001110 11111110
00110110 00110101 01010110 11110010 00000000
00001111 11110111 10101010 10101001 10011000
00110101 10100010 11001000 10010010 01110010
00000000 01111110 01011101 01111001 10100100
00101110 01100001 00011000 11100000 01010100
00111011 10000000 00111010 11110101 11010000
00011010 00101110 10100001 01110111 00011110
00011001 11101001 10110011 11111000 10001000
00011001 00101001 00101111 11100000 01001010
00010010 00110011 11010101 01000011 11001110
00110110 11110011 01010000 00110000 00100010
00110110 11011100 01000110 01000111 11111100
00001000 10110110 00110010 01111000 00101100
00011000 01101100 01010011 10001001 11010110
00010010 11101011 01101011 11100110 00100100
00000100 01000101 10010011 11011111 10101000
00110010 11010110 10001110 11100011 01101000
00101111 11111100 10110001 11001001 10010010
00101011 10101111 00011011 10010010 01110110
00011111 01101010 10111101 00010111 11001100
00000100 01010010 01110101 00100011 00110110
00000010 11011111 00001100 01100111 10011000
00000000 00111100 11100101 10001010 00000000
00111111 10101010 10101010 10101010 11111110
00100000 10101011 11101011 01000100 10000010
00101110 10110100 10001011 10000010 10111010
00101110 10010100 00100000 01010000 10111010
00101110 10110101 10010101 10000100 10111010
00100000 10101011 00011000 00011000 10000010
00111111 10001010 01000100 00000100 11111110
$5 for FTF, BYOP
Congrats to jcmcscmc for their FTF. You guys are impressive.