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I 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
by brl 18y ago
I 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.