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Literally hosed. There's a funny jargon term "rubber hose cryptography" that's used to refer to the cryptanalysis method where you beat someone with a rubber ho
by api 3y ago
Literally hosed. There's a funny jargon term "rubber hose cryptography" that's used to refer to the cryptanalysis method where you beat someone with a rubber hose until they give you the key. It's 100% effective against all forms of cryptography including even post-quantum algorithms.
- dmayle 3y agoThat's actually not true. It can do nothing about M of N cryptography. (That's when a key is broken up such that there are N parts, and at least M (less than N) are required to decrypt. It doesn't matter how many rubber hoses you have, one person can fully divulge or give access to their key and it's still safe.
- jacquesm 3y agoSure, so you hit all of the people that have all of the pieces. Problem solved.
- saalweachter 3y agoOr you publicly announce you're hitting 1 of the N people with the rubber hose until M-1 of the other people send you their key fragments. It's not like these keys are shared among disinterested strangers who have no attachment to each other.
- worthless-trash 3y agoSomehow, somewhere you've just influenced a megacorp's internal crypto process.
- kyleplum 3y agoThat situation just requires a longer hose
- gabereiser 3y agoand more beatings.
- snoman 3y agoOr M hoses.
- hn_version_0023 3y agoI always giggle a little when really smart people forget thugs exist and do what they’re told. If that includes breaking the knees of M people to get what they’re after, then M pairs of knees are gonna get destroyed. This isn’t hard to understand, but it’s easy to forget our civilization hangs by a thread more often than any of us care to admit.
- Randomizer42 3y agoThat’s hyperbole
- MichaelZuo 3y agoAny organization that is really really serious about security will obviously keep at least N-M +1 folks, along with their family, in other countries. Which is a much much higher bar to clear for any would be rubber hose attackers.
- solardev 3y agoYour secrets aren't really safe unless Xi and Putin each have part of your key personally memorized.
- __alexs 3y agoI think you can probably get away with only breaking one pair of knees and sending a video of it to the other people.
- solardev 3y agoYoutube would delist that before they could all see it though.
- sofixa 3y agoYou know there are other ways to have a video and send it to people than YouTube, right? You can just email a link from dropbox or gdrive, or an attachment, or send a WhatsApp/Telegram/etc. message, send a letter with a USB drive, etc.
- pixl97 3y agoLets say for example Bob, Jon, and Tom have pieces of the key. Bob and Jon are in the US and arrested over and commanded by a court to give up the key. Tom is the holdout. The US will issue an international arrest warrant, and now Tom can never safely fly again or the plane will be diverted to the nearest US friendly airport where they will be extradited. So, yea, "safe" is very situational here.
- BurningFrog 3y agoDoesn't Tom's key fragment have to be on a disk somewhere for things to work? That's the actual weak link to attack.
- LinuxBender 3y agoThis probably works if each person has a cyanide+happy drug pill or a grenade and is willing to sacrifice themselves and the rubber-hoser(s). I think that requires a rare level of devotion. This process must also disable a simple and fragile signalling device to let the others know what's coming.
- ipaddr 3y agoYou would be surprised that for a percent this would not work. Some even like it. Some have a deathwish and want to be a martyr. Some people blow themselves up to further a cause. Also put under heavy stress memories of keys cannot be recalled at times. It's probably slightly less effective than threatening to kill family members but probably more than threat of jail time. Either way you require someone alive and with mental awareness. The mind reading tools found in science fiction hasn't been developed yet.
- jacquesm 3y agoWe're talking about normal people, not psychopaths.
- l33t7332273 3y agoTerrorists are generally highly altruistic, not psychopaths. It’s a lot easier to blow yourself up(or to spread ideology which encourages it)for a cause that you believe is helping people, in particular _your_ people.
- jacquesm 3y agoThe terrorists that blow themselves up and that blow other people up are usually misguided brainwashed angry young men. It's nothing to do with ideology, everything to do with power. Or did you think blowing up schools full of girls is something people genuinely believe helps their people, to give just one example? Ordinary people just want to be left alone. Old guys wishing for more power will use anything to get it, including sacrificing the younger generations.
- l33t7332273 3y ago> did you think blowing up schools full of girls is something people genuinely believe helps their people It absolutely is something that they think helps their people, yes.
- aborsy 3y agoThis would not work well, because you can’t do it in a secret manner. Overuse of the rubber hose cryptography will become known, and there will be public backlash.
- eastbound 3y agoSeems like the NSA is threatening everyone of arrest (=state-organized violence) if they don’t secretly give them keys, and Snowden revealed it, and there is no public backlash.
- amluto 3y agoHose-resistant cryptography is possible. Secret sharing comes to mind, or a system by which even the principals can only compromise a key slowly.