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

The NSA's crypto "breakthrough"

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 101 posts

Re: The NSA's crypto "breakthrough"

#61

Post by dasil003 »

crazygringo wrote: post #42

Totally tangential, but... I must have seen that exact same photo of NSA headquarters 100 times over the past month, at the head of every blog entry related to it. It is too much to ask the nation's photographers just to take a few more pictures from different angles? ;) It's as bad as as the Onion's opinion on Snowden ("Nation Demands New Photograph Of Edward Snowden"): https://www.google.com/search?safe=off&q=%22Na…

Show some gratitude. You have no idea how many individuals had to sacrifice their personal lives to get that picture into the commons.

Re: The NSA's crypto "breakthrough"

#62

Post by ig1 »

twotwotwo wrote: post #58
ig1 wrote: post #57

There's at least two other significant possibilities: 1) There's an attack against RSA which doesn't involve factorization 2) There's an attack against AES / Serpent / Twofish I'd say the second is considerably more likely, firstly because the one NSA quote we have on it is "cryptanalyze, or break, unfathomably complex encryption systems" - which sounds much more like a new attack like differential cryptanalysis whic…

On point 2, NSA still allows the use of AES-256 to protect top secret data: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_Suite_B_Cryptography

Another option could be a practical attack on 128bit RC4.

But I don't think the fact they're still using it means it hasn't been broken. Historically countries have sacrificed countless soldiers because saving them would have revealed that the enemy crypto-system had been broken.

Re: The NSA's crypto "breakthrough"

#63

Post by ianstallings »

tomjen3 wrote: post #59
ianstallings wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chances are, if this system exists it will be accessible by only a very small number of people and kept a secret from the others with obfuscation and compartmentalization. So we'd need a very specific leaker out of a small group of people. It would be akin to hoping we'll see the secrets of the "nuclear football". Now one day over-the-counter quantum computers will probably become a reality. In that age we'll see mor…

That might happen if you handle dry cleaning for the white house: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brad-wilmouth/2010/10/21/abc-no...

I'm surprised they didn't mention Reagan. When he got shot the codes were lost in the hospital and found on the floor later.

Re: The NSA's crypto "breakthrough"

#64

Post by ianstallings »

crazygringo wrote: post #42

Totally tangential, but... I must have seen that exact same photo of NSA headquarters 100 times over the past month, at the head of every blog entry related to it. It is too much to ask the nation's photographers just to take a few more pictures from different angles? ;) It's as bad as as the Onion's opinion on Snowden ("Nation Demands New Photograph Of Edward Snowden"): https://www.google.com/search?safe=off&q=%22Na…

It's really hard to take pictures of the NSA and I wish I was joking. When you drive past it, on say MD's Route 100, there are signs stating not to stop or take pictures and police officers with their lights on at all times on the side of the road. You can't stop here unless it's an emergency. I'm not sure about the laws that back this up but I've never tested them.

Re: The NSA's crypto "breakthrough"

#65

Post by advice4u »

dasil003 wrote: post #61
crazygringo wrote: post #42

Totally tangential, but... I must have seen that exact same photo of NSA headquarters 100 times over the past month, at the head of every blog entry related to it. It is too much to ask the nation's photographers just to take a few more pictures from different angles? ;) It's as bad as as the Onion's opinion on Snowden ("Nation Demands New Photograph Of Edward Snowden"): https://www.google.com/search?safe=off&q=%22Na…

Show some gratitude. You have no idea how many individuals had to sacrifice their personal lives to get that picture into the commons.

What do you mean? As far as I can tell, it is freely available on NSA's website:

http://www.nsa.gov/about/_images/pg_hi_res/nsa_aerial.jpg

Re: The NSA's crypto "breakthrough"

#66

Post by natrius »

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.

The American government is collecting as much data about as many humans as it can, which I find morally repugnant. I support efforts to make that more difficult, even if it weakens the American government.

Re: The NSA's crypto "breakthrough"

#67

Post by Zoomla »

crazygringo wrote: post #42

Totally tangential, but... I must have seen that exact same photo of NSA headquarters 100 times over the past month, at the head of every blog entry related to it. It is too much to ask the nation's photographers just to take a few more pictures from different angles? ;) It's as bad as as the Onion's opinion on Snowden ("Nation Demands New Photograph Of Edward Snowden"): https://www.google.com/search?safe=off&q=%22Na…

crypto "breakthrough" post and this is the most important comment?

Re: The NSA's crypto "breakthrough"

#68

Post by twotwotwo »

yk wrote: post #56
harshreality wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's ECDH and ECDSA.

Yes, I should have read the wiki link. However my point was, that Suite B is so generic that we can not really speculate why the NSA did recommend this set of algos and not something else.

They've written up a case for ECC. More elsewhere in the comments, but a key point is "RSA's really slow if you want 2^256 security": http://www.nsa.gov/business/programs/elliptic_curve.shtml

Re: The NSA's crypto "breakthrough"

#69

Post by jashephe »

crazygringo wrote: post #42

Totally tangential, but... I must have seen that exact same photo of NSA headquarters 100 times over the past month, at the head of every blog entry related to it. It is too much to ask the nation's photographers just to take a few more pictures from different angles? ;) It's as bad as as the Onion's opinion on Snowden ("Nation Demands New Photograph Of Edward Snowden"): https://www.google.com/search?safe=off&q=%22Na…

From your own statement, I think we can deduce that the NSA isn't too happy with having its picture taken.

It's a pity that I can't source this specifically, but I vaguely remember reading in either James Bamford's "The Shadow Factory" [1] or his "Body of Secrets" [2] that the NSA once leased an entire office building that had been built near the edge of Fort Meade, simply because the top floors could see onto the campus.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shadow_Factory [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_of_Secrets

Re: The NSA's crypto "breakthrough"

#70

Post by [deleted] »

yk wrote: post #23
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.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN