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Crypto breakthrough shows Flame was designed by world-class scientists

arstechnica.com

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Re: Crypto breakthrough shows Flame was designed by world-class scientists

#91

Post by [deleted] »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #86
its_so_on wrote: post #85

stupid. "There were mathematicians doing new science to make Flame work." the government thinks that this is just like normal weapons research. what they don't realize is that "secure-enough" crypto is far more important to the world economy than their small use in breaking it. if a government could spend $800B and prove/create a machine that makes asymmetric cryptography impossible - and will be reverse-engineered a…

Can't say I don't disagree. It seems as though the governments of western democracies are spending a lot more effort on digital swords to stab at our enemies than on digital shields to protect their citizens.

[deleted]

Re: Crypto breakthrough shows Flame was designed by world-class scientists

#92

Post by praxulus »

its_so_on wrote: post #85

stupid. "There were mathematicians doing new science to make Flame work." the government thinks that this is just like normal weapons research. what they don't realize is that "secure-enough" crypto is far more important to the world economy than their small use in breaking it. if a government could spend $800B and prove/create a machine that makes asymmetric cryptography impossible - and will be reverse-engineered a…

>if a government could spend $800B and prove/create a machine that makes asymmetric cryptography impossible - and will be reverse-engineered and known to the world within 3 years of when they start using it, they probably would.

The alternative is waiting 10 years for academia to discover the vulnerability, the whole time risking that an even worse organization will discover and exploit it.

Ideally they would spend the $800B breaking it, along with another $200B developing something to replace it before it goes public. Even if they don't do the second part, it's still no worse than what would happen eventually anyway.

Re: Crypto breakthrough shows Flame was designed by world-class scientists

#93

Post by smallblacksun »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #86
its_so_on wrote: post #85

stupid. "There were mathematicians doing new science to make Flame work." the government thinks that this is just like normal weapons research. what they don't realize is that "secure-enough" crypto is far more important to the world economy than their small use in breaking it. if a government could spend $800B and prove/create a machine that makes asymmetric cryptography impossible - and will be reverse-engineered a…

Can't say I don't disagree. It seems as though the governments of western democracies are spending a lot more effort on digital swords to stab at our enemies than on digital shields to protect their citizens.

The NSA says that about 1/3 of their budget is put towards protecting US government systems and data (though there is no way to verify that). It is extremely difficult for them to even attempt to protect non-governmental systems. The NSA was involved in SELinux, and designed the SHA family of hash functions. This, along with their certification of various cryptographic standards as acceptable for government use, seems to me to be about all they could do defensively without requiring them to have access to private systems and data.

Re: Crypto breakthrough shows Flame was designed by world-class scientists

#94

Post by jostmey »

fleitz wrote: post #19

Hmm... if only there was some sort of National Security Agency that employed cryptographers so we'd know about these things first and could protect us from these attacks.

The NSA employs more mathematicians than any other organization.

Source: http://www.nsa.gov/research/tech_transfer/advanced_math/inde...

Re: Crypto breakthrough shows Flame was designed by world-class scientists

#95

Post by peterwwillis »

_b8r0 wrote: post #90
ajross wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly posters aren't getting the sarcasm, so I'll spell it out: the NSA is clearly suspect number one. What's more interesting to me, though, isn't that they had this technique, it's that they let it out for ... what? It seems like this is a garden variety public worm. One would think that if the NSA had the ability to forge windows code signatures like this, they would have used it more selectively. Some spook is…

The NSA is not suspect number one. The Russians have had superb cryptographers for decades, heck GCHQ invented public key cryptography years before Diffie Helmann and denied it's very existence within for decades. Attribution is a bitch. It's not a slam dunk to suggest that a particular agency is at fault without supporting evidence.

Hell, the people I know who don't work for the government scare me with the kind of advanced research they do. And if it was government funding they might farm out to the private sector if there was more advanced research there with this kind of attack vector in mind.

Re: Crypto breakthrough shows Flame was designed by world-class scientists

#96

Post by wrekkuh »

its_so_on wrote: post #85

stupid. "There were mathematicians doing new science to make Flame work." the government thinks that this is just like normal weapons research. what they don't realize is that "secure-enough" crypto is far more important to the world economy than their small use in breaking it. if a government could spend $800B and prove/create a machine that makes asymmetric cryptography impossible - and will be reverse-engineered a…

My question is; Is there a solution here?

This will only become an arms race, or skipping that entirely; the web will just be a destructive place. Another battlefield. Where in the history of civilization can we pull similarities and find a solution?

As the facts appear today; someone (or group, or government) attacked someone else (or group, or government) abusing a mechanism millions upon millions rely upon. Now the instructions to mimic that abuse is in the hands of another malignant.

How have we avoided this in the past?

Re: Crypto breakthrough shows Flame was designed by world-class scientists

#97

Post by christoph »

_b8r0 wrote: post #90
ajross wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly posters aren't getting the sarcasm, so I'll spell it out: the NSA is clearly suspect number one. What's more interesting to me, though, isn't that they had this technique, it's that they let it out for ... what? It seems like this is a garden variety public worm. One would think that if the NSA had the ability to forge windows code signatures like this, they would have used it more selectively. Some spook is…

The NSA is not suspect number one. The Russians have had superb cryptographers for decades, heck GCHQ invented public key cryptography years before Diffie Helmann and denied it's very existence within for decades. Attribution is a bitch. It's not a slam dunk to suggest that a particular agency is at fault without supporting evidence.

Indeed.

It's easy to pin it on a nation state or intelligence agency, but it's worth considering the possibility that it was rogue elements in one (or both worlds) that exploited this (and various people) for purely financial gain.

Re: Crypto breakthrough shows Flame was designed by world-class scientists

#99

Post by niels_olson »

jcfrei wrote: post #70
dfc wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "programming community's" threat model in cyberspace is no different than anyone's threat model in meatspace. If a well funded government decides you are an enemy of the state they can harm you in meatspace or cyberspace. Are you staying up at night worried about a hellfire missile coming in your window?

the great thing about the internet is that it puts you as a citizen in a superior position to your local government (assuming you can somehow hack your way thru government controlled routers, which is in most cases trivial), because thanks to the anonymous nature of the web and the global access to it you can circumvent any national censorship and expose any kind of unjustice happening in your own country. those kind…

This is why Sergey Brin is netizen hero number one in my book. He actually cares, at a visceral level, about this and has taken actions to protect the net.

Re: Crypto breakthrough shows Flame was designed by world-class scientists

#100

Post by niels_olson »

rdl wrote: post #75
batista wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well understood also. It's not like they're doing cutting edge pharmaceutical drug research that takes mega scientists and billions in funding and very precise enzyme targeting, etc. They mostly iterate on known drugs to make their making cheaper / more addictive. And they can easily test on junkies (I presume).

The "research chemical" community, out of China, SE Asia, Israel, and Europe, is pretty much doing cutting edge pharmaceutical drug research -- the point being to produce "interesting" club drugs while staying ahead of regulation. Not spending billions, but doing fairly reasonable drug discovery, synthesis, and testing. Of course, sometimes they get it wrong, and you end up with face flesh eating humans in Florida.

> flesh eating humans in florida

Citation?

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