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Jon Bringhurst
Asked: 2014-01-07 09:00:49 +0800 CST

What is the KRYPTOLAN protocol?

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I've searched for a while and can't seem to find any information on what KRYPTOLAN is.

For the transport layer, IP protocol number 0x41 is assigned.

In addition, ports 398/udp and 398/tcp are also assigned, so an application layer protocol may exist in addition to the transport layer protocol.

Does anyone have details on what the purpose of KRYPTOLAN is and how it works?

ip

2 Answers

  1. I don't know any details either and never heard of the protocol before, it seems like it is arcane and long-forgotten.

    Cisco has this:

    Full Name: kryptolan

    Description: LAN/WAN Krypto (LWK) is a infrastructure that provides two secure functions; transport protection and data object protection. It was developed by Sectra.

    and it provides a reference to

    http://liu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:16958/FULLTEXT01

    which looks promising at the first glance since "Paul Liu" is the reference name given by the IANA for the KRYPTOLAN protocol in its published protocol numbers list, but this is just a naming coincidence since "liu" is "Linköping University" in this case. And the referenced paper does deal with authentication models, but not with the subject of protocols at all, so whoever collected the Information for the Cisco database, did a bad job here. KRYPTOLAN seems to be a trademark held by Sectra since 1993, but I do not think it relates to the protocol registred with the IANA.

    If you desperately are seeking protocol details, I would suggest asking Paul Liu himself. This one seems to be the right one to ask.

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  2. Contrary to what syneticon surmises, the Sectra KRYPTOLAN is the one registered with IANA. The official listing in RFC1700 is

    kryptolan       398/tcp    Kryptolan
kryptolan       398/udp    Kryptolan
#                          Peter de Laval <[email protected]>

    Whatever it may once have been good for, it appears to now be defunct. A search on Sectra's own site returns no hits. Ditto for Peter Laval

    If you're seeing traffic using that port, it's probably just assigned at random from the set of all free ports. If you see something listening on that port and you didn't configure it to do so, almost certainly malware. Tools such as netstat can help determine what piece of software is using the port.

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