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What the CIA WikiLeaks Dump Tells Us: Encryption Works

nytimes.com

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Re: What the CIA WikiLeaks Dump Tells Us: Encryption Works

#111

Post by shshhdhs »

praptak wrote: post #80
hendzen wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Symmetric encryption not being broken doesn't really help you if the encryption key has been exchanged using a (presumably quantum-breakable) form of asymmetric encryption. Most encryption in the wild works this way.

One thing you could do is to exchange the keys in a nonstandard way. Phone or whatever. Obviously still breakable but at least not by a standard dragnet.

I wouldn't use the phone for exchanging plaintext keys. You're forgetting about ECHELON, wiretaps, and the dragnets where LEA are ignoring (or purposefully misinterpreting) the law.

It's really cheap to store ALL phone calls these days, and just "playback" when you get the legal search warrant.

Re: What the CIA WikiLeaks Dump Tells Us: Encryption Works

#112

Post by shshhdhs »

badminton1 wrote: post #98
andai wrote: post #67

I don't see any mention of quantum computers in here so I thought I'd mention: the NSA themselves are concerned that quantum computing will be a great threat to encryption in the near future. Keep in mind that the NSA and god knows who else are storing encrypted communications to break them later. Quantum computing will defeat RSA, DH, ECC, asymmetric crypto, but it will only weaken symmetric crypto (eg. AES) by a fa…

Current quantum computers lack the amount of qubits required to implement practical quantum integer factorization (e.g: Shor's algorithm) at the scale required to break encryption. For example the NIST standard for the controversial dual eliptic curve deterministic random bit generator standard, involves two numbers, p and q, which are 100 digit long. To date, largest integer factored in a quantum computer is reporte…

200,000 what? Digits? Bits?

Re: What the CIA WikiLeaks Dump Tells Us: Encryption Works

#113

Post by rocqua »

hendzen wrote: post #94
bad_user wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's understandable, since the point of asymmetric encryption is communication. But people can use symmetric encryption when it's about your own data security (i.e. you encrypt it, you decrypt it). If you're using encryption to keep your data safe (e.g. local files, full disk encryption), then you don't actually need asymmetric encryption.

Agreed. However, the kind of mass surveillance people are worried about isn't really concerned with personal data at rest. That data already requires targeted surveillance to get at. Additionally... unless you generated all the bytes you are encrypting yourself without transmitting them over a network at any time... e.g. video/pictures you took yourself and then stored to your own encrypted disk, your data could be c…

There is still tremendous value in symmetric encryption for off-site storage, especially cloud-based storage. This allows storage to be off-loaded wherever without needing the storage location to be trusted. All that needs to be stored locally is the key.

Done right, this means quantum won't get you access to dropbox-like stuff. (Dropbox itself probably doesn't work like that, it'll store the symmetric keys server side somehow.)

Re: What the CIA WikiLeaks Dump Tells Us: Encryption Works

#114

Post by chimeracoder »

acjohnson55 wrote: post #100
andai wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're exchanging keys in person, I suggest looking into OTP, currently the only known mathematically unbreakable form of encryption, and so simple it has been used since at least World War I.

Mathematically unbreakable if your pad is truly random

Sure, but if your RNG is compromised, there's no point talking about encryption in the first place.

Re: What the CIA WikiLeaks Dump Tells Us: Encryption Works

#115

Post by [deleted] »

acjohnson55 wrote: post #100
andai wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're exchanging keys in person, I suggest looking into OTP, currently the only known mathematically unbreakable form of encryption, and so simple it has been used since at least World War I.

Mathematically unbreakable if your pad is truly random

[deleted]

Re: What the CIA WikiLeaks Dump Tells Us: Encryption Works

#116

Post by chimeracoder »

Retric wrote: post #95
bitexploder wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-quantum_cryptography Doubled key size does not mean twice as hard to break. Algorithm weaknesses are a thing. This WP is pretty accurate though. It describes the world we think will exist after legitimate quantum computing.

There is someone evidence that QM will result in weaker signals to the point where you can't use it to break real world crypto. It's something of an open question at this point.

Could you elaborate? I'm not sure I follow. It's been a while since my CS Theory classes.

Re: What the CIA WikiLeaks Dump Tells Us: Encryption Works

#117

Post by rocqua »

shshhdhs wrote: post #112
badminton1 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Current quantum computers lack the amount of qubits required to implement practical quantum integer factorization (e.g: Shor's algorithm) at the scale required to break encryption. For example the NIST standard for the controversial dual eliptic curve deterministic random bit generator standard, involves two numbers, p and q, which are 100 digit long. To date, largest integer factored in a quantum computer is reporte…

200,000 what? Digits? Bits?

the largest number was 200,000 i.e. 6 digits or about 21 bits

Re: What the CIA WikiLeaks Dump Tells Us: Encryption Works

#118

Post by rwbhn »

matt4077 wrote: post #44
caustiko wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This post is grey, and I'm not quite sure why. It's a bit on the "pessimistic" side, but... that philosophy is actually spot on IMO when it comes to security. So why downvote this? I'm honestly a bit new to this community but to me this sceptic perspective as it pertains to software security is ... well, actually it isn't even enough. Is this a weakness w/HN where even justified pessimism is eschewed?

Oh, HN is plenty pessimistic... But this sort of pessimism isn't really useful. The attitude that "anything is insecure if there is any closed source software anywhere in the stack" means that it's impossible to advance security, because it's almost impossible to avoid binaries (i. e. firmware). Apple, for example, has done a few things that are laudable in this field – i. e. risking a public court fight with the FBI…

Practical security is all about risk management. And the first step is understanding what your risks are - not assuming or pretending they don't exist. Depending on the nature of the secrets your friend wants to share and who they are trying to hide from, advising them to avoid phones altogether might not be a bad idea. And falsely assuring them something is secure when that can't be confirmed could cause somebody a world of hurt.

Re: What the CIA WikiLeaks Dump Tells Us: Encryption Works

#119

Post by snakeanus »

andai wrote: post #67

I don't see any mention of quantum computers in here so I thought I'd mention: the NSA themselves are concerned that quantum computing will be a great threat to encryption in the near future. Keep in mind that the NSA and god knows who else are storing encrypted communications to break them later. Quantum computing will defeat RSA, DH, ECC, asymmetric crypto, but it will only weaken symmetric crypto (eg. AES) by a fa…

I find it weird that hash signatures are not commonly used since most asymmetric hash signature schemes (if not all) are provably safe as long as the hash function used is safe and they are also quantum-safe and very trivial to implement.

It is also extremely annoying that programs like gpg do not support the generation of large RSA keysizes such as 15360 bits which would require many more qbits in order to break (and since RSA 4096 and 2048 are much more commonly used, they might not even build a quantum computer capable of breaking them or they might create a much smaller amount of them).

Re: What the CIA WikiLeaks Dump Tells Us: Encryption Works

#120

Post by snakeanus »

MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #107
andai wrote: post #67

I don't see any mention of quantum computers in here so I thought I'd mention: the NSA themselves are concerned that quantum computing will be a great threat to encryption in the near future. Keep in mind that the NSA and god knows who else are storing encrypted communications to break them later. Quantum computing will defeat RSA, DH, ECC, asymmetric crypto, but it will only weaken symmetric crypto (eg. AES) by a fa…

Its more of a problem if you have key exchange (like RSA); here [1] it says that with AES is supposedly secure against quantum computers with 'sufficiently sized key sizes'; For key exchange they are trying to adapt elliptic curves. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-quantum_cryptography .

Elliptic curves are broken in a quantum setting.
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