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What the CIA WikiLeaks Dump Tells Us: Encryption Works

nytimes.com

221–230 of 270 posts

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

#221
"Encryption has grown so strong that even the FBI had to seek Apple's help last year in cracking the locked iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino attackers. "

Nope, that was about setting precedent using a case that is very hard to argue against morally, so that they can erode privacy and protections on a wider scale.

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

#222
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. Note that some "post-quantum" key exchange schemes already exist (based on lattice cryptography, for which there are no known poly-time quantum attacks), e.g. https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/1092 . But I haven't heard of it being used anywhere.

The sad truth is, until we've spent a lot more time analysing and attacking those algorithms, they aren't as secure as what we've got.

Lattice based schemes are roughly as old as ECC. They also enjoy something called worst-case to average-case redictions for certain parameter ranges, which gives us confidence in their strength.

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

#223
post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never heard of such technique, what does onioning do?

Use of new encryption algorithm on the ciphertext encrypted by the old algorithm.

Sounds good for symmetric crypto, but not for public key exchanges, which is what quantum compute attacks are so far all about.

There could be double-tree PKI, where nodes in the tree are represented by two key pairs in different kinds of key spaces, with the different signatures terminating in two ephemeral key pairs, which are then used for key derivation, and the subsequent secret perhaps concatenated and boosted into a higher key space? The complexity would be mind boggling. And, weaknesses in one half of the tree could translate into a security reduction on the final symmetric key, so it would have to be way over powered to be effective.

Not a simple problem to solve.

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

#224

Another thing is important: trust. As a naive user I have no idea what's going on on my phone, hardware or software wise We are essentially trusting these companies with everything. Encryption is no good if Apple and Google provide backdoors to their systems to the CIA or NSA.

Encryption in transit defeats dragnet surveillance. Forcing the NSA et al to actually break into the phones they're interested in substantially reduces the amount of information they can actually collect. They can't just tap internet backbones and read everything, like they do with plaintext communication.

But they can say "Hey, Google/Apple/Microsoft/Facebook/etc, give us access on your end for our dragnet to work after it comes in from encrypted transit. Also, this is a NSL so neener neener."

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

#225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Right. So now you have to figure out how to get a secure RNG into people's hands, so they can create pads. How does that work? Genuinely curious whether there's a reasonable solution.

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

#226
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Re: What the CIA WikiLeaks Dump Tells Us: Encryption Works

#227
I'm gay i remember when i was engaged with my ex boyfriend,i had already confirmed he was cheating on me but i needed proof so i went in search of a private investigator to follow my boyfriend's daily activities from his house to his office,his friends house everywhere!!!... but i noticed one time he was always on his phone, the private investigator couldn't get his phone from him so i couldn't see what was going on and who he was always talking too,then a friend introduce a 'CYBER MILF' to me his name is mutewizard@cyberservices.com... he hacked into my boyfriends phone and he showed me conversations my boyfriend had with his other lovers on his whatsapp,instagram,facebook i was so impressed i gave him twice the amount he asked for, i think you guys should try him out.regards from A-jay

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

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Right. So now you have to figure out how to get a secure RNG into people's hands, so they can create pads. How does that work? Genuinely curious whether there's a reasonable solution.

Devices that produce a trickle of truly random numbers can be produced for a few bucks. They're included in modern CPUs, for example.

But that was never the problem. The problem is, now what? To use this OTP you need to securely deliver pads to everybody you'll ever send a message to. So, OTP is practical for a handful of secret agents who'll receive messages of a few dozen words per year from a single controller, and useless for most of us in the real world.

_This_ problem is why we have public key cryptography.

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

#229
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm thinking about giving both machines a little speaker and microphone and using high frequency pulses to transfer the text. (modem) I don't know enough about computer security to understand whether a specially crafted piece of morse code audio (transferred through actual sound waves) could be used as an exploit, but I'm leaning towards "implausible".

Then my notebook is 'airgapped'. It connects to internet via wifi :). More seriously, if it connects through non popular means (such as a protocol over sound) it is just security through obscurity.

If andai is just connecting a full-function laptop to the internet with some ethernet-over-audio bridge, then you're right.

But don't you think he has a point if he's talking about a simple, single-purpose device like an arduino - say - that can't connect to the internet, but allows keyboard entry of plaintext, then encrypts it, sends ciphertext to a PC via audio?

I which case I think there are some advantages in using audio; if the device used wifi / ethernet / USB then you have to trust a lot of code to be exploit free:

- ethernet driver code - wifi chip firmware - kernel network code - USB drivers etc

Whereas if he's written his own simple bytes-to-audio converter in a few hundred lines of code that can be audited, then I can be be more easily convinced that it's not possible for an adversary to remotely install a keylogger or extract keys from my little encryption device.

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

#230

Does it? Maybe it's a huge false flag campaign. You should always operate under the assumption that "they" can see everything they want to see on your internet connected device if they deem you important enough. For example, what's with that one news story about government agencies being unable to break TrueCrypt. How did that get out? Sounds like a huge bullshit campaign to me, aimed at creating trust in TrueCrypt!…

Cryptanalytic capabilities of academia are on par or are ahead of the government's abilities. In the past it might have been the case that governments were agreed of the curve, but academic crypto has progressed immensely in the past couple of decades.
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