Longer version of this story here (2016): https://magazine.atavist.com/the-mastermind -- fascinating story and these articles captivated me. Have had them bookmarked for ages :-)
Incredible read indeed, someone needs to make a movie about this.
A Coder Who Became a Crime Boss
21–30 of 71 posts
Re: A Coder Who Became a Crime Boss
#22Haha I was sure this was going to be about PLR. Alright, story time. Around 2007, when I was in undergrad, I started getting really interested in cryptography. At the time TrueCrypt was a very popular project in crypto circles, and I spent a lot of time hanging out on the TC forums, soaking up as much information as I could. As a journalism major, the extreme secrecy of crypto-geeks naturally piqued my curiosity. I s…
Why not write to him.
Re: A Coder Who Became a Crime Boss
#23Haha I was sure this was going to be about PLR. Alright, story time. Around 2007, when I was in undergrad, I started getting really interested in cryptography. At the time TrueCrypt was a very popular project in crypto circles, and I spent a lot of time hanging out on the TC forums, soaking up as much information as I could. As a journalism major, the extreme secrecy of crypto-geeks naturally piqued my curiosity. I s…
Why not write to him.
He's not exactly the kind of person I want to be around.
Re: A Coder Who Became a Crime Boss
#24I hate that they put that list like that: "Private jets full of gold. Missile-guidance systems. Unbreakable encryption. African militias. Explosives. Kidnapping." One of the things in this list is not like the other.
Unbreakable encryption For all practical purposes, it is true.
Unbreakable encryption is a thing though. It's called one-time-pad and it doesn't require any sort of fancy algorithms. As long as your random key is the same length as the message, the decryption is literally unbreakable(because the contents could decode into literally any other message of the same length).
Re: A Coder Who Became a Crime Boss
#25I hate that they put that list like that: "Private jets full of gold. Missile-guidance systems. Unbreakable encryption. African militias. Explosives. Kidnapping." One of the things in this list is not like the other.
I propose a game, given a list, find a way that each item is not like the others:
- Kidnapping - It's the only action.
- Explosives - It's the only thing that is illegal to make.
- African Militias - It's the only one about using people.
- Unbreakable Encryption - It's the only thing that is used by regular people on a regular basis.
- Missile Guidance Systems - It's the only thing that's not unique.
- Private jets full of gold - It's the only thing most people would trade an arm and a leg for.
Re: A Coder Who Became a Crime Boss
#26> ...this series of events ... each seemed like a kind of message from an adjacent reality that few of us experience directly.
This nailed it for me. By the description this was a combination of sophistication and ad-hoc, all conducted in what is indeed a parallel world (e.g. the confusion and corruption helps them where it would get in my way).
In a movie or novel everything lines up to make the storytelling crisper. Which ultimately makes it implausible. This was quite gripping.
Re: A Coder Who Became a Crime Boss
#27I hate that they put that list like that: "Private jets full of gold. Missile-guidance systems. Unbreakable encryption. African militias. Explosives. Kidnapping." One of the things in this list is not like the other.
I propose a game, given a list, find a way that each item is not like the others: - Kidnapping - It's the only action. - Explosives - It's the only thing that is illegal to make. - African Militias - It's the only one about using people. - Unbreakable Encryption - It's the only thing that is used by regular people on a regular basis. - Missile Guidance Systems - It's the only thing that's not unique. - Private jets f…
> Explosives - It's the only thing that is illegal to make.
doesnt the US restrict import/export of encryption over a certain keylength as well?
Re: A Coder Who Became a Crime Boss
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
I propose a game, given a list, find a way that each item is not like the others: - Kidnapping - It's the only action. - Explosives - It's the only thing that is illegal to make. - African Militias - It's the only one about using people. - Unbreakable Encryption - It's the only thing that is used by regular people on a regular basis. - Missile Guidance Systems - It's the only thing that's not unique. - Private jets f…
> Explosives - It's the only thing that is illegal to make. doesnt the US restrict import/export of encryption over a certain keylength as well?
Uh, I don't think so? Pretty sure they either gave up, decided it was unconstitutional, or both.
Either way, "make", not "export". I'm almost certain it's illegal to export missile guidance systems under ITAR.
Re: A Coder Who Became a Crime Boss
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unbreakable encryption For all practical purposes, it is true.
Unbreakable encryption is a thing though. It's called one-time-pad and it doesn't require any sort of fancy algorithms. As long as your random key is the same length as the message, the decryption is literally unbreakable(because the contents could decode into literally any other message of the same length).
As basically a complete novice in encryption, it was interesting to learn about the unbreakable "one-time pad" method.
"The one-time pad (OTP) is an encryption technique that cannot be cracked, but requires the use of a one-time pre-shared key the same size as, or longer than, the message being sent. In this technique, a plaintext is paired with a random secret key (also referred to as a one-time pad). Then, each bit or character of the plaintext is encrypted by combining it with the corresponding bit or character from the pad using modular addition."
Re: A Coder Who Became a Crime Boss
#30For those who are interested in TrueCrypt history, here (it is in Russian) https://news.softodrom.ru/ap/b19702.shtml (https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...) author did a small research and came to conclusion that TrueCrypt most likely was created by a Czech guy named David Tesařík.
Update: IMHO this research is the most comprehensive one which I saw regarding TrueCrypt authorship