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The British seem to hold a similar respect for GCHQ (which is probably more like the NSA than the CIA) - there seems to be a widespread belief that they can cra
by pmjordan 18y ago
The British seem to hold a similar respect for GCHQ (which is probably more like the NSA than the CIA) - there seems to be a widespread belief that they can crack even strong, modern encryption. (I doubt it, but nobody really seems to know anything about GCHQ - the grandfather of a UK friend of mine apparently worked there and the family only found this out after his death)
- brl 18y agoI really doubt that intelligence agencies such as the NSA and GCHQ have any secret and powerful ways to break cryptography at all. I know that everybody thinks that they do, but where is the evidence for this? Even during the 60s and 70s when they had a near monopoly on cryptographic research there is no indication that they made any unique and spectacular breakthroughs.
- pmjordan 18y agoI know little about cryptanalysis and the mathematics behind cryptographic ciphers, so I can't comment much on that. But I doubt they'd break widely-used ciphers and continue to allow the military and executive to use them. Once broken, they would have to fear that the method would leak or be independently recreated by someone else. Everyone still uses RSA, D-H, AES and Blow/twofish though, as far as I know. And I find it unlikely that they've developed and built special hardware to brute-force these algorithms and nobody knows about it.