Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Crypto breakthrough shows Flame was designed by world-class scientists

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 128 posts

Re: Crypto breakthrough shows Flame was designed by world-class scientists

#51

Post by vecinu »

dfc wrote: post #18
jcfrei wrote: post #14

it's always unsettling seeing a governmental or otherwise undisclosed institution developing such cryptographic breakthroughs in secrecy. this leaves me as a developer with inferior tools to protect my data against any kind of intrusion. it’s understandable from a national perspective but unfortunate for the programming community at large. so far we still have bcrypt or scrypt - but who knows, maybe someday we'll hav…

The "programming community's" threat model in cyberspace is no different than anyone's threat model in meatspace. If a well funded government decides you are an enemy of the state they can harm you in meatspace or cyberspace. Are you staying up at night worried about a hellfire missile coming in your window?

His fear stems from the fact that most people believe they have a right to the Internet and are essentially anonymous.

To respond to your hellfire missile analogy, if I am in Canada or the US, I'm not worrying about it but if I'm in the middle east, it's a different story.

Re: Crypto breakthrough shows Flame was designed by world-class scientists

#52

Post by eli »

johnlepson wrote: post #20
josephagoss wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its actually a shame, in the pursuit of blaming the USA and/or Israel people lose common sense. Look, It seems that it was certainly USA/Israel, but throwing common sense out the window just so we can make this point is not a good idea. What these people are saying, essentially is that very few countries have lots of smart people in different industry's, which is wrong. The zero days can come from all over, the PLC a…

...but the US is not a nation-state.

I don't think that's true, but either way it is not helpful to the discussion.

Re: Crypto breakthrough shows Flame was designed by world-class scientists

#53

Post by commandar »

jcfrei wrote: post #14

it's always unsettling seeing a governmental or otherwise undisclosed institution developing such cryptographic breakthroughs in secrecy. this leaves me as a developer with inferior tools to protect my data against any kind of intrusion. it’s understandable from a national perspective but unfortunate for the programming community at large. so far we still have bcrypt or scrypt - but who knows, maybe someday we'll hav…

The fascinating thing is that strong commercial/public cryptography has only really become a "thing" in the past couple of decades; it used to be nearly exclusively the domain of governments, which is why even today there are still residual export controls on strong cryptography.[1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_in_the_U...

Re: Crypto breakthrough shows Flame was designed by world-class scientists

#54

Post by Symmetry »

johnlepson wrote: post #29
bcrescimanno wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. I have very little doubt that it was indeed a nation-state who developed it; but, my main issue is with the distinction of it being a "wealthy" one. Couldn't Flame, perhaps, have been developed by Iran and released on themselves as a means for drumming up anti-Israeli or anti-American sentiment? I realize something like that is totally conjecture; but, I don't see it as any further conjecture than, "it mu…

The US is not a nation-state.

Um, what is it then? Since the 20th Century most inhabitants of the US seem to think of themselves as Americans as opposed to Pennsylvanians or whatever. The US has a few things that look sort of like imperial possessions (e.g. Puerto Rico), but those are a pretty small part.

Re: Crypto breakthrough shows Flame was designed by world-class scientists

#55

Post by shock-value »

batista wrote: post #33
planetguy wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would one smart, determined person, working in his spare time and for his own satisfaction, be capable of doing it? I mean, if I had the capability to screw up Iran's nuclear program in my spare time I probably would, because, y'know, fuck Iran.

> I mean, if I had the capability to screw up Iran's nuclear program in my spare time I probably would, because, y'know, fuck Iran. Fuck Iran why exactly? Because toppling their democratically elected government and establishing a puppet in the fifties wasn't enough? Or arming Saddam's Iraq to fight them in the eighties? Or maybe because, say, TX can execute 15 year old "criminals" and ban abortion and/or gay marriag…

planetguy is probably referring to the _government_ of Iran, which hardly pays much heed to its citizens' decisions about "how they want to live".

Re: Crypto breakthrough shows Flame was designed by world-class scientists

#56

Post by dfc »

vecinu wrote: post #51
dfc wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "programming community's" threat model in cyberspace is no different than anyone's threat model in meatspace. If a well funded government decides you are an enemy of the state they can harm you in meatspace or cyberspace. Are you staying up at night worried about a hellfire missile coming in your window?

His fear stems from the fact that most people believe they have a right to the Internet and are essentially anonymous. To respond to your hellfire missile analogy, if I am in Canada or the US, I'm not worrying about it but if I'm in the middle east, it's a different story.

And I am saying that he does not have to worry about NSA, Mossad or The Secret Army of Northern Virginia spending years to develop Flame 2.0 so they can read his email. On the flip side if you are a high level enemy of the state you should still be worried if you are in Topeka or Ottawa; if its not a hellfire coming in the window it will be equally lethal scary rough men dressed in black.

Re: Crypto breakthrough shows Flame was designed by world-class scientists

#57

Post by oh_sigh »

0x0 wrote: post #5
kposehn wrote: post #2

"Flame could only have been developed by a wealthy nation-state" While I do agree that it was indeed developed by one, I'm not sure how it could only have been developed by one. Would it truly take massive levels of money to do or simply some smart, determined people?

Presumably, if you are not employed by a three-letter agency, and you manage to invent a breakthrough crypto technique, there's more value in publishing it, than sitting on it until you just blow it all away on one exploit anonymously. At least, you would _hope_ criminal enterprises don't actually have the means to fund and recruit their own secret, cutting-edge math research labs/networks :)

What value exists in publishing a breakthrough crypto technique? The best value exists in selling it on the black market to the highest bidder

Re: Crypto breakthrough shows Flame was designed by world-class scientists

#58

Post by Symmetry »

choppyeloo wrote: post #45
archgoon wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have repeated this multiple times on this thread. Would you like to explain what you mean?

If you don't know what a term means, why the fuck are you using it? http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-nation-state.htm You people are fucking ignorant.

The author of that is wrong to conflate nationality and ethnicity. A nationality is a much more general concept. Because most people in the US would list "American" as their primary group identity, and because the people who don't aren't off in their own geographical areas, the US is more of a nation state than it is anything else. Now, you shouldn't throw around the term nation state unless you deliberately mean to exclude, say, Kenya or the old USSR - but that's a different matter.

EDIT: Or compare the US and the EU. The typical New Yorker regards people in Florida as the same sort of person as them, so the permanent fiscal transfers from New York to Florida don't spark the sort of outrage in the US that permanent transfers from Germany to Greece do.

Re: Crypto breakthrough shows Flame was designed by world-class scientists

#60

Post by joejohnson »

fleitz wrote: post #19

Hmm... if only there was some sort of National Security Agency that employed cryptographers so we'd know about these things first and could protect us from these attacks.

Maybe the NSA is the "wealthy nation-state." It's not a stretch to imagine this attack was the NSA.
Post reply on HN