4 ms·

Why not?

cornholio 1y ago
Because it lowers the threshold for a total informational compromise attack from "exfiltrate 34PB of data from secure govt infrastructure" down to "exfiltrate 100KB of key material". You can get that out over a few days just by pulsing any LED visible from outside an air-gapped facility.
- dkga 1y ago
  Wait what?
  - lambdaone 1y ago
    There are all sorts of crazy ways of getting data out of even air-gapped machines, providing you are willing to accept extremely low data rates to overcome attenuation. Even with million-to-one signal-to-noise ratio, you can get significant amounts of key data out in a few weeks. Jiggling disk heads, modulating fan rates, increasing and decreasing power draw... all are potential information leaks.
    - ta20240528 1y ago
      > There are all sorts of crazy ways of getting data out of even air-gapped machines. Chelsea Manning apparently did it by walking in and out of the facility with a CD marked 'Lady Gaga'. Repeatedly https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/nov/28/how-us-embassy-cables-leaked https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/nov/28/how-us-embassy...
- abujazar 1y ago
  On which TV show?
WCSTombs 1y ago
As of today, there's no way to prove the security of any available cryptosystem. Let me say that differently: for all we know, ALL currently available cryptosystems can be easily cracked by some unpublished techniques. The only sort-of exception to that requires quantum communication, which is nowhere near practicability on the scale required. The only evidence we have that the cryptography that we commonly use is actually safe is that it's based on "hard" math problems that have been studied for decades or longer by mathematicians without anyone being able to crack them. On the other hand, some popular cryptosystems that were more common in the past have been significantly weakened over the years by mathematical advances. Those were also based on math problems that were believed to be "hard." (They're still very hard actually, but less so than we thought.) What I'm getting at is that if you have some extremely sensitive data that could still be valuable to an adversary after decades, you know, the type of stuff the government of a developed nation might be holding, you probably shouldn't let it get into the hands of an adversarial nation-state even encrypted.
- yard2010 1y ago
  Thank you for writing this post. This should be the top comment. This is a state actors game, the rules are different.
- Intermernet 1y ago
  While I understand what you're saying, you can extend this logic to such things as faster-than-light travel, over-unity devices, time travel etc. They're just "hard" math problems. The current state of encryption is based on math problems many levels harder than the ones that existed a few decades ago. Most vulnerabilities have been due to implementation bugs, and not actual math bugs. Probably the highest profile "actual math" bug is the DUAL_EC_DRBG weakness which was (almost certainly) deliberately inserted by the NSA, and triggered a wave of distrust in not just NIST, but any committee designed encryption standards. This is why people prefer to trust DJB than NIST. There are enough qualified eyes on most modern open encryption standards that I'd trust them to be as strong as any other assumptions we base huge infrastructure on. Tensile strengths of materials, force of gravity, resistance and heat output of conductive materials, etc, etc. The material risk to South Korea was almost certainly orders of magnitude greater by not having encrypted backups, than by having encrypted backups, no matter where they were stored (as long as they weren't in the same physical location, obviously).
  - famouswaffles 1y ago
    >While I understand what you're saying, you can extend this logic to such things as faster-than-light travel, over-unity devices, time travel etc. They're just "hard" math problems. No you can't. Those aren't hard math problems. They're Universe breaking assertions. This is not the problem of flight. They're not engineering problems. They're not, "perhaps in the future, we'll figure out..". Unless our understanding of physics is completely wrong, then None of those things are ever going to happen.
    - Intermernet 1y ago
      According to our understanding of physics, which is based on our understanding of maths, the time taken to brute force a modern encryption standard, even with quantum computers, is longer than the expected life of the universe. The likely-hood of "finding a shortcut" to do this is in the same ball-park as "finding a shortcut" to tap into ZPE or "vacuum energy" or create worm-holes. The maths is understood, and no future theoretical advances can change that. It would involve completely new maths to break these. We passed the "if only computers were a few orders of magnitude faster it's feasible" a decade or more ago.

Why not?

Because it lowers the threshold for a total informational compromise attack from "exfiltrate 34PB of data from secure govt infrastructure" down to "exfiltrate 100KB of key material". You can get that out over a few days just by pulsing any LED visible from outside an air-gapped facility.

dkga 1y ago
Wait what?
- lambdaone 1y ago
  There are all sorts of crazy ways of getting data out of even air-gapped machines, providing you are willing to accept extremely low data rates to overcome attenuation. Even with million-to-one signal-to-noise ratio, you can get significant amounts of key data out in a few weeks. Jiggling disk heads, modulating fan rates, increasing and decreasing power draw... all are potential information leaks.
  - ta20240528 1y ago
    > There are all sorts of crazy ways of getting data out of even air-gapped machines. Chelsea Manning apparently did it by walking in and out of the facility with a CD marked 'Lady Gaga'. Repeatedly https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/nov/28/how-us-embassy-cables-leaked https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/nov/28/how-us-embassy...
abujazar 1y ago
On which TV show?

WCSTombs 1y ago

As of today, there's no way to prove the security of any available cryptosystem. Let me say that differently: for all we know, ALL currently available cryptosystems can be easily cracked by some unpublished techniques. The only sort-of exception to that requires quantum communication, which is nowhere near practicability on the scale required. The only evidence we have that the cryptography that we commonly use is actually safe is that it's based on "hard" math problems that have been studied for decades or longer by mathematicians without anyone being able to crack them. On the other hand, some popular cryptosystems that were more common in the past have been significantly weakened over the years by mathematical advances. Those were also based on math problems that were believed to be "hard." (They're still very hard actually, but less so than we thought.) What I'm getting at is that if you have some extremely sensitive data that could still be valuable to an adversary after decades, you know, the type of stuff the government of a developed nation might be holding, you probably shouldn't let it get into the hands of an adversarial nation-state even encrypted.

yard2010 1y ago
Thank you for writing this post. This should be the top comment. This is a state actors game, the rules are different.
Intermernet 1y ago
While I understand what you're saying, you can extend this logic to such things as faster-than-light travel, over-unity devices, time travel etc. They're just "hard" math problems. The current state of encryption is based on math problems many levels harder than the ones that existed a few decades ago. Most vulnerabilities have been due to implementation bugs, and not actual math bugs. Probably the highest profile "actual math" bug is the DUAL_EC_DRBG weakness which was (almost certainly) deliberately inserted by the NSA, and triggered a wave of distrust in not just NIST, but any committee designed encryption standards. This is why people prefer to trust DJB than NIST. There are enough qualified eyes on most modern open encryption standards that I'd trust them to be as strong as any other assumptions we base huge infrastructure on. Tensile strengths of materials, force of gravity, resistance and heat output of conductive materials, etc, etc. The material risk to South Korea was almost certainly orders of magnitude greater by not having encrypted backups, than by having encrypted backups, no matter where they were stored (as long as they weren't in the same physical location, obviously).
- famouswaffles 1y ago
  >While I understand what you're saying, you can extend this logic to such things as faster-than-light travel, over-unity devices, time travel etc. They're just "hard" math problems. No you can't. Those aren't hard math problems. They're Universe breaking assertions. This is not the problem of flight. They're not engineering problems. They're not, "perhaps in the future, we'll figure out..". Unless our understanding of physics is completely wrong, then None of those things are ever going to happen.
  - Intermernet 1y ago
    According to our understanding of physics, which is based on our understanding of maths, the time taken to brute force a modern encryption standard, even with quantum computers, is longer than the expected life of the universe. The likely-hood of "finding a shortcut" to do this is in the same ball-park as "finding a shortcut" to tap into ZPE or "vacuum energy" or create worm-holes. The maths is understood, and no future theoretical advances can change that. It would involve completely new maths to break these. We passed the "if only computers were a few orders of magnitude faster it's feasible" a decade or more ago.