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The NSA's crypto "breakthrough"

economist.com

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Re: The NSA's crypto "breakthrough"

#21

Post by cmyr »

derefr wrote: post #5

One of the "nice" things about the NSA: they rely on pretty standard crypto--the same kind the rest of us do!--for their less sensitive, but still classified, secrets. NSA Ciphersuite B ( http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_Suite_B_Cryptography ) is built into a lot of gov/mil communications technology. And it's just RSA, ECDHE, and so on--all that same stuff available in TLS. In other words: if the NSA break one of t…

I'm not sure if this would be true. It's a game theory problem, surely. I'm not especially crypto-literate, but if player A has the ability to read the majority of currently encrypted comms world-wide, broadcasting that ability (by suddenly and dramatically changing their own encryption methodologies) would be a very silly move unless there was a very serious reason to believe somebody else was very close to developing the same abilities... and if they were, then they would also be changing their own encryption standards, which we haven't seen.

So it basically comes down to whether or not we 'assume our enemies are advancing their own tech at roughly the same rate.' The NSA probably has an okay idea of what 'roughly' is, and if you had this ability you wouldn't be showing your hand lightly.

Way more speculatively, I'd be curious to know whether or not it would be possible to add 'next-gen' crypto to existing practices in such a way that it might be transparent?

Re: The NSA's crypto "breakthrough"

#23

Post by yk »

kcorbitt wrote: post #9

Breaking public-key crypto would have to be the biggest coup in SIGINT in the history of ever . Much bigger than cracking the Enigma. Just thinking about the sheer volume of internet traffic at every level and in every country that relies on the security of encryption makes the possibility of it being fundamentally broken a literal nightmare. I don't think it has happened. But if it had , that would be the kind of se…

Well, it would be a very well guarded secret. But even then the question is how public key crypto is broken. If they can easily generate exploits for implementations, because they know a essential implementation detail everybody else is missing, then it would be fundamentally different from being able to break RSA directly, or if they have a constructive prove of P=NP.

Re: The NSA's crypto "breakthrough"

#24

Post by sneak »

sillysaurus2 wrote: post #8
devx wrote: post #2

Sounds like we need a couple more Snowden's to come out from NSA.

Why? Because the government doesn't deserve to have any secret programs whatsoever? I've said it before and I'll say it again: Even if leaking XKeyscore and PRISM was morally justified, leaking the intelligence budget or leaking other programs is probably unwise. Remember that when we talk about leaking, we're talking about weakening the American government. We should at least think about the implications.

http://youtu.be/ZmwRgTSqT9U

Re: The NSA's crypto "breakthrough"

#25

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

sillysaurus2 wrote: post #8
devx wrote: post #2

Sounds like we need a couple more Snowden's to come out from NSA.

Why? Because the government doesn't deserve to have any secret programs whatsoever? I've said it before and I'll say it again: Even if leaking XKeyscore and PRISM was morally justified, leaking the intelligence budget or leaking other programs is probably unwise. Remember that when we talk about leaking, we're talking about weakening the American government. We should at least think about the implications.

>weakening the American government.

There are some who believe that wasting incredible resources on military / defense is actually weakening the country in light of the fact that we have no superpower enemy with even the remote potential to match our military. This leaves us vulnerable to other novel attacks, as well as just spending ourselves into oblivion. You know, the same way we 'overcame' the USSR's military threat via the arms race when their economy could not match the pace of ours.

Yes, the US gov't should be weakened by any account; given the degree which it has overstepped its stated bounds.

Re: The NSA's crypto "breakthrough"

#28

Post by gnaffle »

kcorbitt wrote: post #9

Breaking public-key crypto would have to be the biggest coup in SIGINT in the history of ever . Much bigger than cracking the Enigma. Just thinking about the sheer volume of internet traffic at every level and in every country that relies on the security of encryption makes the possibility of it being fundamentally broken a literal nightmare. I don't think it has happened. But if it had , that would be the kind of se…

And, as a corrolary of this, you presently won't have much to fear if this break has happened, simply because the NSA would only use it _very_ sparingly, like how the allies used the Enigma break during WW2.

Of course, if the cat ever gets out of the bag, that situation would change.

Re: The NSA's crypto "breakthrough"

#29

Post by devx »

seiji wrote: post #15
s_q_b wrote: post #3

The Economist: > Does the NSA have a quantum computer in the basement of its headquarters in Maryland (pictured above)? It is theoretically possible, but pretty unlikely... A Canadian firm called D-Wave is presently selling a specialised kind of quantum computer—Lockheed Martin, an American defence giant, and Google have each bought one—but it is not suitable for this kind of work. In-Q-Tel - "About Us" > "We make in…

The most advanced math a quantum computer has done to date is "factored 21 into 3×7, with high probability (Martín-López et al. 2012)." Remember: companies are in the game of marketing hype to ride your scifi hopes and dreams. When you see a company saying "quantum" anything, discount their unqualified claims greatly. (Investors are not immune to being manipulated by hype. Claiming "they must be good because they hav…

I think that's for "normal" quantum computers. D-wave is a different kind of quantum computer.

Re: The NSA's crypto "breakthrough"

#30

Post by shmageggy »

batgaijin wrote: post #17

p=np yo

Integer factorization is currently not known to be NP complete, and is expected to not be so. Therefore, even such a breakthrough as posited in the article would have no immediate bearing on the question of P vs NP.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integer_factorization#Difficult...

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