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LLMs won't break symmetric crypto

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Re: LLMs won't break symmetric crypto

#11

Post by dboreham »

modeless wrote: post #7

I don't really find the "because it's difficult" arguments convincing at all. Especially the one claiming it's hard because it requires designing and running a large number of tests and reasoning about the results of each one. That kind of tedious grinding is exactly where LLMs should shine vs humans! The only convincing argument here is that these things are battle tested (literally in most cases I would guess), wit…

I read it as "because there are no viable attacks", which is...fightin' talk I suppose.

What I have seen LLMs do recently is find what turned out to be very basic bugs in encryption and ZK libraries that for some reason humans never saw. In those cases it wasn't that the encryption algorithms were broken per se, but the the implementation was.

This alone seems very worthwhile.

Re: LLMs won't break symmetric crypto

#12

Post by stingraycharles »

zkmon wrote: post #9

Cryptographic systems are based on 1) mathematical impossibility of reversing some integer/mod calculation, 2) time required for a brute force attack, 3) correctness of algorithms and code used in implementations. The last part (algorithms and code) is where LLMs have a chance. The first one is not similar to the mathematical breakthroughs LLMs are making recently. There is a loss of information in mods and integer c…

Yeah, I wouldn’t say with certainty that LLMs will never break any symmetrical crypto algorithm. It will certainly require a lot of effort, but so does solving some hard math challenges and it has been proven successful in that in the past.

Most likely outcome will be that a security researcher is able to break one with assistance of / in collaboration with an LLM.

Re: LLMs won't break symmetric crypto

#13

Post by arberx »

LLMs will accelerate math research, increasing understanding in areas like quantum which will eventually lead to breakthroughs that will break most standard asymmetric encryption algorithms with the side effect of breaking crypto

Re: LLMs won't break symmetric crypto

#14

Post by sghiassy »

OJFord wrote: post #10
sghiassy wrote: post #2

A next-word-in-the-sentence prediction engine can’t predict the factor of two insanely large prime numbers… tell me more

I think the thing most of us missed in dismissing GPT 2-3 as 'next word in sentence predictors' was that recursively this allows something resembling thinking, 'reasoning'. LLMs are capable not just of calculating the most likely next word from a prompt according to a corpus of training text, but of doing so & feeding back into themselves, the most likely word now based not only on the corpus but on the basic predict…

I’m with ya

I’ve even heard arguments that prediction is consciousness.

But using a Language-Model to break cryptography is still a stretch for me.

From the little I know, cryptography uses information theory to make sure that reversing the equation (aka finding the passowrd) is predictably impossible, given current compute standards for the foreseeable future (disregard quantum computer here though :) they’re not LLMs)

Re: LLMs won't break symmetric crypto

#16

Post by modeless »

dboreham wrote: post #11
modeless wrote: post #7

I don't really find the "because it's difficult" arguments convincing at all. Especially the one claiming it's hard because it requires designing and running a large number of tests and reasoning about the results of each one. That kind of tedious grinding is exactly where LLMs should shine vs humans! The only convincing argument here is that these things are battle tested (literally in most cases I would guess), wit…

I read it as "because there are no viable attacks", which is...fightin' talk I suppose. What I have seen LLMs do recently is find what turned out to be very basic bugs in encryption and ZK libraries that for some reason humans never saw. In those cases it wasn't that the encryption algorithms were broken per se, but the the implementation was. This alone seems very worthwhile.

Agreed, we have probably seen only the tip of the iceberg on that. I wouldn't want to be holding niche crypto coins right now.

Re: LLMs won't break symmetric crypto

#17

Post by fluoridation »

sghiassy wrote: post #6
dadrian wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RSA is asymmetric crypto. This article is about symmetric cryptography. I expect LLMs will advance state of the art in factoring algorithms, considerably.

Thank you I guess I only know asymmetric cryptography. I should learn more about symmetric… Anyone care to boil it down for me :) Edit: Isn’t this just advanced static analysis of any code base?

Very, very briefly, most symmetric algorithms are block ciphers, meaning that their input are blocks of a fixed length in bits (plus a key), and their output is another block of the same length. Ideally, a block cipher with its key produces a random permutation of the input space into the output space, thus diluting the information and dramatically increasing (ideally maximizing) the entropy; what that means is that whether the input is just zeroes and ones in ASCII or fully random, after encryption it should be indistinguishable.

Re: LLMs won't break symmetric crypto

#18

Post by sghiassy »

fluoridation wrote: post #17
sghiassy wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you I guess I only know asymmetric cryptography. I should learn more about symmetric… Anyone care to boil it down for me :) Edit: Isn’t this just advanced static analysis of any code base?

Very, very briefly, most symmetric algorithms are block ciphers, meaning that their input are blocks of a fixed length in bits (plus a key), and their output is another block of the same length. Ideally, a block cipher with its key produces a random permutation of the input space into the output space, thus diluting the information and dramatically increasing (ideally maximizing) the entropy; what that means is that…

Thank you

I wish I knew more in this domain.

It almost sounds like hashing with a salt

Re: LLMs won't break symmetric crypto

#19

Post by [deleted] »

arberx wrote: post #13

LLMs will accelerate math research, increasing understanding in areas like quantum which will eventually lead to breakthroughs that will break most standard asymmetric encryption algorithms with the side effect of breaking crypto

[deleted]

Re: LLMs won't break symmetric crypto

#20

Post by catlifeonmars »

dadrian wrote: post #4
sghiassy wrote: post #2

A next-word-in-the-sentence prediction engine can’t predict the factor of two insanely large prime numbers… tell me more

RSA is asymmetric crypto. This article is about symmetric cryptography. I expect LLMs will advance state of the art in factoring algorithms, considerably.

Perhaps, but it’s still trivially easy to increase the difficulty of factorization problems on classical computers, We need a machine that can run Shor’s algorithm before integer factorization is practical and we’re still a long way out f M that.
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