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I can't remember where I read a longer explanation of this but a quick google search got me to this blog entry http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2059 http://
by tgarma1234 10y ago
I can't remember where I read a longer explanation of this but a quick google search got me to this blog entry http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2059 http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2059 where the topic comes up. I think that for the most part what we civilians know as cryptography is often either a red-herring, a trick, or woefully out of date from the point of view of what the professional state actors know how to do. Anyway you get that impression from declassified documents. Crypto works well enough for commercial and civilian purposes but has no impact on militarized hacking I think. Please correct me if I am wrong but I think this is all by design, even going so far as the NSA putting backdoors in CPUs and suchlike. If they send a company a national security letter that insists on compliance, the company not only has to comply but also can't legally disclose to the public that they complied, so we can't really know the truth here.
- eganist 10y agoAdmittedly commenting without having jumped into the content here, but from what you're describing, it sounds less about how state actors are "breaking so much crypto" and more about how state actors are "breaking so many cryptographic implementations." This might also explain the possible shift away from compromising algorithms (with perhaps the notable exception of Dual_EC_DRBG): the IC knows well enough that everyone's going to do just enough things wrong in _implementing them_ that it's perhaps more beneficial to promote unweakened ciphers in the grand scheme. Heck they could even promote sound implementation practices and have the confidence to know any one target will gum something up just enough to give them a way in. But who knows. Odds are still decent that I'm wrong with the compromised algorithms assertion.