Calling NSA to find your encryption key after a few bits were flipped (2010)

Post by nix23 » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 6:53 AM UTC

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #73

nix23 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's your error, having a system with important data no actual/realtime backup no second system and no plan to recover from a failed update and no ecc is YOUR error alone. However, intel should have made ecc the standard and not just for 1000$+ Xeons.

"It's your error, having a system with important data no actual/realtime backup" Have you ever taken picture of anything important with your phone, like a crime, or a car accident? Have you ever called 911 or sent money? How dare you use an unreliabke system without ECC, what if a random bitflip would cause it to send 10x more money or data woupd be lost without realtime backup! This disrespect to users and wanky att…

Post by danachow » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 7:49 AM UTC

willis936 wrote: post #32

colejohnson66 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you encrypt at a lower level than the filesystem then you're at the mercy of that lower level's error correction, but in practice it is rare to encrypt at a lower level. My understanding is that many SSDs do encryption transparently. The ATA protocol even has a “SECURE ERASE” command that instructs the drive to wipe just the encryption key. This allowed even “bad blocks” to be erased securely.

SSDs have a lot more aggressive error correction than most filesystems because they anticipate a high error rate and are constantly changing the map of logical blocks to physical blocks. Tapes at rest don't have to worry about that though.

Post by ClumsyPilot » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 8:57 AM UTC

nix23 wrote: post #111

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It's your error, having a system with important data no actual/realtime backup" Have you ever taken picture of anything important with your phone, like a crime, or a car accident? Have you ever called 911 or sent money? How dare you use an unreliabke system without ECC, what if a random bitflip would cause it to send 10x more money or data woupd be lost without realtime backup! This disrespect to users and wanky att…

>Have you ever taken picture of anything important with your phone, like a crime, or a car accident? Have you ever called 911 or sent money? I don't compare my phone to a server (24x7) with 10000$ worth of data, but even if i do i would make a versioned backup every X minutes, especially before "updates". But yes phones should have ecc too.

Post by nix23 » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 2:01 PM UTC

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #115

nix23 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Have you ever taken picture of anything important with your phone, like a crime, or a car accident? Have you ever called 911 or sent money? I don't compare my phone to a server (24x7) with 10000$ worth of data, but even if i do i would make a versioned backup every X minutes, especially before "updates". But yes phones should have ecc too.

I do, because a picture of the criminal might be worth more than $10,000, or you might have to call an ambulance and your life is worth something

Post by Gravyness » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 2:21 PM UTC

charcircuit wrote: post #44

baruchel wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bit flips are quite useful for sorting huge arrays of data: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28766154

That's not a proper sort. A sort is not just a function that takes in a list and returns a list that is sorted. The result must also include all of the elements that you had when starting. That property isn't checked by the code you linked.