4 ms·

encryption is good at ensuring data confidentiality in the near term, but not long term. all major state actors vacuum up and retain encrypted communications an

encryption is good at ensuring data confidentiality in the near term, but not long term. all major state actors vacuum up and retain encrypted communications and store them until the time it is possible to crack. the average Joe's vacation planning with his friends over txt won't matter too much. but a senators phone call, or a ceo phone call, or even an engineers txt, email and phone calls can lead to io theft, Intel leak, etc. once encryption is cracked a few years later.

sdfasf 5y ago
"encryption is good at ensuring data confidentiality in the near term" Very interesting. I knew that state actors syphon everything, but I assumed it was since they can afford and it's a Hail Mary if they stumble on a breakthrough or a side channel. Some further Qs: - What's near term? - What's in the far term? - I thought that encryption could be made arbitrarily more difficult to crack at little cost. Is this not the case? - Does this future assume quantum computing is feasible? Finally, if encryption is no longer believed to be safe in the long term, shouldn't we be moving towards making one-time pads practical? Given modern data storage densities, it's not that unpractical for many use cases (say embassy communication, etc)
- nradov 5y ago
  In theory if large scale quantum computing becomes practical then it might become possible to decrypt traffic encrypted using certain public key algorithms. Basically by using Shor's algorithm to factor large numbers. But there's no guarantee that will ever work in practice, and even if it does there are alternative encryption algorithms which are resistant to quantum computing attacks. It's also not easy to identify and exfiltrate high bandwidth data streams even if you compromise a piece of network equipment. If Chinese intelligence services want information on a certain politician or business leader they're more likely to skip the decryption nonsense and just recruit one of the target's associates as a spy.
HeavenFox 5y ago
Fortunately encryption does not need to work forever. It just needs to work long enough until the information it's protecting ceases to be valuable.

sdfasf 5y ago

"encryption is good at ensuring data confidentiality in the near term" Very interesting. I knew that state actors syphon everything, but I assumed it was since they can afford and it's a Hail Mary if they stumble on a breakthrough or a side channel. Some further Qs: - What's near term? - What's in the far term? - I thought that encryption could be made arbitrarily more difficult to crack at little cost. Is this not the case? - Does this future assume quantum computing is feasible? Finally, if encryption is no longer believed to be safe in the long term, shouldn't we be moving towards making one-time pads practical? Given modern data storage densities, it's not that unpractical for many use cases (say embassy communication, etc)

nradov 5y ago
In theory if large scale quantum computing becomes practical then it might become possible to decrypt traffic encrypted using certain public key algorithms. Basically by using Shor's algorithm to factor large numbers. But there's no guarantee that will ever work in practice, and even if it does there are alternative encryption algorithms which are resistant to quantum computing attacks. It's also not easy to identify and exfiltrate high bandwidth data streams even if you compromise a piece of network equipment. If Chinese intelligence services want information on a certain politician or business leader they're more likely to skip the decryption nonsense and just recruit one of the target's associates as a spy.

HeavenFox 5y ago

Fortunately encryption does not need to work forever. It just needs to work long enough until the information it's protecting ceases to be valuable.