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Government Announces Steps to Restore Confidence on Encryption Standards

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121–130 of 132 posts

Re: Government Announces Steps to Restore Confidence on Encryption Standards

#121
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats an interesting concept, I wonder if Russia and China have their own standards/protocols to use? I guess we could get the same effect by encrypting using 3DES, then AES, then blowfish, twofish and then RC4.

Counterintuitively, sequentially applying additional crypto doesn't necessarily improve security; in theory, it may actually damage it.

Any pointer to explanation of the phenomenon?

Re: Government Announces Steps to Restore Confidence on Encryption Standards

#122
post #120
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They put you in prison until you hand over the keys. In the UK this is under RIPA. In the US there's probably some law they can kludge to fit - contempt of court or some-such.

What happens in situations like this if you use a hidden volume within an encrypted file using something like Truecrypt, which allows plausible deniability? You've supplied the "password" but the real meaty stuff is still hidden away... http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/hidden-volume#Y0

Hidden volumes are often done wrong and trivially easy for 'them' to find.

Under UK law the rule isn't to hand over the keys so they can decrypt the ciphertext, but to make the plaintext available.

Re: Government Announces Steps to Restore Confidence on Encryption Standards

#123
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends what you define as being "an American".. Glenn Greenwald, the main journalist publishing the leaks, asserts his US citizenship and his American identity as the ultimate impetus behind his acts -- his belief in the American Constitution and the rights of American citizens

America's conscience. In exile in Brazil.

We should remember his exact reason for being in Brazil in the first place, which he outlines here [1]; he would no doubt be moving to the US as we type if it weren't for the NSA stories

[1] http://ggsidedocs.blogspot.com.br/2013/01/frequently-told-li...

Re: Government Announces Steps to Restore Confidence on Encryption Standards

#124
post #122
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens in situations like this if you use a hidden volume within an encrypted file using something like Truecrypt, which allows plausible deniability? You've supplied the "password" but the real meaty stuff is still hidden away... http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/hidden-volume#Y0

Hidden volumes are often done wrong and trivially easy for 'them' to find. Under UK law the rule isn't to hand over the keys so they can decrypt the ciphertext, but to make the plaintext available.

Yes, I understand that, but if you have 2 passwords, each of which unlocks different plaintext within your encrypted conatainer, then theoretically you could never be found out... (but as you saying, assuming the implementation is correct)

Re: Government Announces Steps to Restore Confidence on Encryption Standards

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that's silly. All of our "Freedom!"-loving allies seem to be in on this. UK, Australia, Sweden, etc. This article mentions that the standards process was being run by Canada, and the Canadians were "finessed" by the NSA. Canada? Really? And, of course, the non-"Freedom!" countries do this also. The only difference between the US and all the other countries is the amount of smarts, work, and money the US is putt…

You notice that France, our Oldest Ally, is not on the list.

Probably because they're not team players and are doing all this stuff themselves.

Re: Government Announces Steps to Restore Confidence on Encryption Standards

#126
This seems to prove that NIST and similar institutions and their standards should not be trusted or taken seriously in regards to security if that is your primary concern.

Anyway anything standardized is going to be relatively well known and therefore more likely to have existing exploits.

But these institutions have proven that they should not be trusted and no amount of PR should change that for prudent individuals or companies.

Re: Government Announces Steps to Restore Confidence on Encryption Standards

#127
post #114
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of this helps you if the random number generated that created your key is compromised.

Even if you use different random number generators?

I suppose you could, yes. If you wanted to make all this happen algorithmically you'd end up with a super-sized key that was a concatenation of all the keys you generated for each of the sub-algorithms, where the sub-algorithms would each consume their respective key chunks.

Re: Government Announces Steps to Restore Confidence on Encryption Standards

#129
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats an interesting concept, I wonder if Russia and China have their own standards/protocols to use? I guess we could get the same effect by encrypting using 3DES, then AES, then blowfish, twofish and then RC4.

Counterintuitively, sequentially applying additional crypto doesn't necessarily improve security; in theory, it may actually damage it.

If the keys used for each cipher are independent it should not weaken security. See section 15.7 of Applied Cryptography (http://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/users/anuag/crypto.pdf).

Re: Government Announces Steps to Restore Confidence on Encryption Standards

#130
post #127
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you use different random number generators?

I suppose you could, yes. If you wanted to make all this happen algorithmically you'd end up with a super-sized key that was a concatenation of all the keys you generated for each of the sub-algorithms, where the sub-algorithms would each consume their respective key chunks.

You don't have to concatenate your keys, simply XORing the random bitstreams together works fine (my intuition says that XORing them would provide a stronger result).
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