3 ms·
I must be paranoid now. My first reaction was "It's a trap!".
by vertis 13y ago
I must be paranoid now. My first reaction was "It's a trap!".
- csense 13y agoPeople have had that reaction to NSA-endorsed cryptosystems ever since they withheld the derivation of the DES S-boxes for a number of years. Wikipedia states [1]: "The 8 S-Boxes of DES were the subject of intense study for many years out of a concern that a backdoor -- a vulnerability known only to its designers -- might have been planted in the cipher. The S-Box design criteria were eventually published (in Coppersmith 1994) after the public rediscovery of differential cryptanalysis, showing that they had been carefully tuned to increase resistance against this specific attack." [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substitution_box http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substitution_box
- vertis 13y agoI was too young to be a participant, however I do remember reading about all the happenings around crypto in the 80s and 90s. It's healthy to suspect crypto systems because of their role in protecting us.
- EthanHeilman 13y agoWell also the fact that they shrunk the key size of DES from 128 bits to 54 bits while DES has a 64 bit block size.
- devin 13y agoHa, more likely a recruiting tool! Reads Article Checks Email "Hello! We are looking for programmers with an understanding of the SIMON and SPECK families of lightweight block ciphers."
- vertis 13y agoWell that's a particular type of trap. To be honest, I wouldn't want to be a programmer or sysadmin at the NSA right now. They're going to "punish" all the remaining employees because of Snowden's actions.
- ars 13y agoI had the same though, but the NSA is actually the one who published, or vetted, most of the encryption tools in common use today. (DES, AES, SHA1, etc)