4 ms·
As with GCHQ's discovery of the concept of asymmetric encryption years before it was rediscovered[1], it's always good to bear in mind that there's likely simil
by 46Bit 14y ago
As with GCHQ's discovery of the concept of asymmetric encryption years before it was rediscovered[1], it's always good to bear in mind that there's likely similar things being devised currently. When weakening or breaking encryption & hashing are such golden keys for certain organisations, they'd be fools to not put a lot of money into researching it.
As I've remarked a few times before, anyone devising a feasible break of RSA or a practical quantum computer would probably keep it quiet and only act on it in absolute need or deniably (like Bletchley Park in WW2). As Bletchley shows, even major operations with tens of thousands of people involved you can keep things very good secrets for decades.
[1] http://cryptome.org/ukpk-alt.htm http://cryptome.org/ukpk-alt.htm
- excuse-me 14y agoThe main defense against AES or similar being secretly broken is that people (nominally) on the same side also use it. If NSA had discovered a flaw in AES and not announced it - then when this was innevitably discovered, there may have been a few conversations with the CIA/Secret Service/The Whitehouse/SAC etc along the lines of: "so there is a flaw in this algorithm and you have been letting us use it all this time for our secrets?" >"Yes but it's OK only we know about it - nobody else could have discovered it independently" "Really? Prove it!" This did actually happen with Bletchley park. After the war various UK/US allies were given copies of the Enigma machine and told that it was unbreakable.