31 ms·

You must be smarter than me, so to collect your five dollars you must explain how my statement means I subscribe to that myth. My way of thinking on the matter

by talmand 14y ago

You must be smarter than me, so to collect your five dollars you must explain how my statement means I subscribe to that myth. My way of thinking on the matter is if you hand someone the technical drawings of a lock, then they have the means to determine how to best open it without having the key.

EliRivers 14y ago
I can explain to you in complete, perfect details how, for example, the RSA public-key encryption system works. If you can use that to crack the encryption (in a useful time) without having the decryption key, you can write your own ticket.
- nevir 14y ago
  And that won't help you get around the fact that DRM is security through obscurity. If DRM were cryptographically secure, we wouldn't be able to read the books at all. The fundamental difference from PKI is that "attackers" have both the content and decryption keys on hand. If your device/app can decrypt a given book in order to display it, then you can be sure that someone else will be able to emulate your decryption method, or just rip the decrypted book from memory. Remember that DRM is not about protecting content over the wire. It is about protecting content from "malicious" users, who also need to be able to consume that same copy of content. If you can write an encryption scheme that does not require consumers to store a key, but still can only be read by a given consumer, you can write your own ticket.
- talmand 14y ago
  Seems you agree with me then. You are suggesting that RSA can be cracked, it just takes time that we don't have. Therefore it's only a matter of time before someone figures out how to crack said encryption in a timely manner. You're only describing a lock that requires tools we currently don't have to get it open without the key. In other words, you're just attempting to throw a bigger lock at the problem and claiming victory. Regardless, RSA encryption is a different matter anyway simply because, for a proper comparison, you would have to make the key to decrypt available to me in some way. In other words, RSA would be just as trivial to crack if the RSA system also told you where it stored the encryption keys.
  - derefr 14y ago
    Er, no. Everything can be cracked in a non-useful amount of time, by just iterating the search space. "Non-useful" meaning "about a googol times the length of the universe." That implies nothing about the possibility of any quicker method.
    - talmand 14y ago
      It also implies nothing about the impossibility of any quicker method.

by talmand 14y ago

EliRivers 14y ago

I can explain to you in complete, perfect details how, for example, the RSA public-key encryption system works. If you can use that to crack the encryption (in a useful time) without having the decryption key, you can write your own ticket.

nevir 14y ago
And that won't help you get around the fact that DRM is security through obscurity. If DRM were cryptographically secure, we wouldn't be able to read the books at all. The fundamental difference from PKI is that "attackers" have both the content and decryption keys on hand. If your device/app can decrypt a given book in order to display it, then you can be sure that someone else will be able to emulate your decryption method, or just rip the decrypted book from memory. Remember that DRM is not about protecting content over the wire. It is about protecting content from "malicious" users, who also need to be able to consume that same copy of content. If you can write an encryption scheme that does not require consumers to store a key, but still can only be read by a given consumer, you can write your own ticket.
talmand 14y ago
Seems you agree with me then. You are suggesting that RSA can be cracked, it just takes time that we don't have. Therefore it's only a matter of time before someone figures out how to crack said encryption in a timely manner. You're only describing a lock that requires tools we currently don't have to get it open without the key. In other words, you're just attempting to throw a bigger lock at the problem and claiming victory. Regardless, RSA encryption is a different matter anyway simply because, for a proper comparison, you would have to make the key to decrypt available to me in some way. In other words, RSA would be just as trivial to crack if the RSA system also told you where it stored the encryption keys.
- derefr 14y ago
  Er, no. Everything can be cracked in a non-useful amount of time, by just iterating the search space. "Non-useful" meaning "about a googol times the length of the universe." That implies nothing about the possibility of any quicker method.
  - talmand 14y ago
    It also implies nothing about the impossibility of any quicker method.