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> Public-key cryptography as we know it today may be rapidly approaching the end of its useful lifespan. No evidence in the article substantiates this bold sta

by a3_nm 13y ago

> Public-key cryptography as we know it today may be rapidly approaching the end of its useful lifespan. No evidence in the article substantiates this bold statement. - "pressuring major Internet firms to provide their "master" SSL keys for government surveillance purposes": this demonstrates a weakness of centralized public-key infrastructures, it does not follow that public-key cryptography is doomed. (See: web of trust.) - wiretaps, snooping, etc.: everyone is welcome to grab a copy of the ciphertext, this does not prove that cryptography is futile -- quite the contrary. - "concerns about the security of widely used cipher algorithms and a range of other associated exploits": vague. - "it is prudent to at least assume that intelligence agencies around the globe may still be working several steps ahead of public "state of the art" in crypto tech": unfalsifiable. - "forced the hands of chip manufacturers to include "special goodies" for surveillance purposes": I am willing to fear deliberate plausibly deniable weaknesses on accelerated hardware implementation of crypto primitives, e.g., PRNGs, but it seems very hard to believe that implementations of public-key crypto using general purpose instructions could be somehow identified by the CPU and somehow tampered with in a way which would be non-obvious somehow. - "when governments really want to target someone, they'll find some way to compromise the associated computers directly -- either through phishing or other malware attacks, or via in-person "black bag" jobs to physically alter systems as they might feel appropriate": humans are the weakest part of cryptosystems, and if they have physical access then they win; nothing new here. In conclusion: > I believe it would be fully appropriate for us to be considering alternative methodologies for data protection that are sufficiently outside the existing public-key "box" Public-key cryptography is a tool. It certainly does not form, in itself, a full "methodology for data protection", but nothing in the article justifies that has lost any usefulness in its current form.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
- mrt0mat0 13y ago
  which time?
  - Kenzo99 13y ago
    Random time, of course.
Kenzo99 13y ago
I would say that government attempts to force data to be handed over reinforce the strength of public key encryption. Since Public Key made its debut, we've known that the only real actual threat to the system was an incredible advance in the realm of factoring. That has not happened. This article talks about the many ways public key can be circumvented, but offers no insight into a mathematical breakthrough. Thus, there will remain a way to encrypt your data, you just need to make sure your keys will always be safe.
chongli 13y ago
Public-key cryptography is a tool. Yeah, I believe the author mistakenly conflated public-key cryptography with the public-key infrastructure (PKI). One is a technology and the other is a set of policies built around a trust model. While the technology remains sound, our confidence in the policies may be weakening. To prepare for this, we may need to look at alternative trust models such as web of trust.
Retric 13y ago
All forms of public key encryption require proof that Alice or Bob are who they say they are or you can setup a man in the middle attack. Without a public key athority to Safely provide the correct public key your stuck with manual key exchanges which can work, but does not scale. If the government has the public key authority's private key they can spoof them and setup man in the middle attacks easily.
- antihero 13y ago
  Web of trust. So say I meet someone visiting from the US that I trust, he gets my public key and signs it, and vice versa, then I can guarantee to people who have my pubkey that the one I'm sending them is his one.
  - Retric 13y ago
    Web of trust has massive scaling issues. The most obvious being a rooted devices can quickly compromise the network and your talking about a huge attack surface if your willing to trust more than one link in the chain. Edit: Realistically if you want secure peer to peer communications your protocalls has to survive when 40+% of peers are compromised and well good luck with that at scale. This seems like a reasonable problem but you also need to be able to revoke certificats.
    - jedbrown 13y ago
      You make it sound like Web of Trust does not include revocation.
    - tekromancr 13y ago
      What about some sort of web of trust model that has a notion of confidence. Lets say I have four people; Alice, Bob, Carol, and me. I know both Bob and Carol, but I don't know Alice directly. Since both Bob and Carol vouch for Alice, I can be fairly sure that Alice is Alice. Now lets say that Bob has reason to believe that Alice has been compromised, so he revokes his link to Alice. Now I have am less confident about Alice, because I have one link to Alice instead of two. Or is this how Web of trust works?
toddsiegel 13y ago
Agreed. Public-key cryptography is fine. Entrusting third parties to protect your privacy is dying. This is something I have been thinking about a lot lately. Users need to take more responsibility for guarding their own privacy. I think there are a lots of business opportunities here: easy to use tools that keep control entirely in Alice's and Bob's hands and public key cryptography is certainly part of the solution.
- state 13y ago
  I've been thinking quite a lot about that exact thing as well. There must be a way to build great commercial tools that are also truly secure. I'd love to discuss further. Contact info in my profile.
  - e3pi 13y ago
    > state 6 hours ago | link | parent | flag > I've been thinking quite a lot about that exact thing as well. There must be a way to build great commercial tools that are also truly secure. I'd love to discuss further. Contact info in my profile. 'state', to solicit this collaboration, would it not be prudent to init a new HN account under a different name?
- christo 13y ago
  The fact that the agencies have to apply pressure to obtain keys proves that the crypto is working. Therefore, if you have, use and keep secret your own keys, the best-resourced intruders cannot practicably get your data. Of course, http://xkcd.com/538/ http://xkcd.com/538/
  - ctdonath 13y ago
    AKA rubber hose cryptanalysis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber-hose_cryptanalysis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber-hose_cryptanalysis
antihero 13y ago
I mean, what's to stop people forming their own signing authorities and distributing the public keys via a trusted method as we do anyway?
- mortenjorck 13y ago
  The fact that neither you nor I have heard of the projects already doing this.
rdtsc 13y ago
> No evidence in the article substantiates this bold statement. The implication is simple and frightening -- classify it as munitions and making illegal to possess. Remember that Constitution also allows one to have arms. Well arms in 1700s was rifle and that was a top weapon whether for government infantry or dissenting militants. What happened, you can still own arms but you can't own ICBMs, air-2-surface missiles, attack helicopters, nuclear devices etc. So as you can see just because something seems so inalienable, it can still be easily taken (not saying use of public crypto is a Constitutional right, just making a comparison between obvious rights easily stripped away). Not only that, many country do make it illegal to have crypto software. It is not an outlandish proposition. It won't take much to drum up support. Just need 3-4 high profile cases of: terrorists or child molesters using PGP and Joe Sixpack would be pretty easily convinced to call his representative and ask him to vote to make such "enabling tools" illegal.
- anigbrowl 13y ago
  The implication is simple and frightening -- classify it as munitions and making illegal to possess. You know we went through this in the 1990s and PGP was declassified as a munition, yes? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy#Criminal_investigation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy#Criminal_in... Before taking the claims at face value it's good to do a bit of background research. Also, I generally find anything where every paragraph consists only of a single sentence can safely be ignored.
  - rdtsc 13y ago
    Exactly that was my point. It was only 20 year ago. It was declassified as munition it can be reclassified as munitions pretty easily as well. > Before taking the claims at face value it's good to do a bit of background research. It also good to read and understand the whole comment before replying. I didn't say it is illegal (in US, it is in other countries) I said it is not an unreasonably hard step to take.
    - anigbrowl 13y ago
      I read your whole comment, I just don't agree with you. It would be wholly impractical to reclassify PGP as munitions considering its ubiquitous availability. It got declassified in the first place because there was strong legal precedent supporting the publication of the algorithm in book form. I think your fears are unreasonable.
zallarak 13y ago
You are totally nitpicking on semantics. Obviously the general concept of public key encryption is not at risk.
- jpttsn 13y ago
  "As Feds Demand the Keys, Preparing for the Death of Public-Key Encryption" Obviously.

by a3_nm 13y ago

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

mrt0mat0 13y ago
which time?
- Kenzo99 13y ago
  Random time, of course.

Kenzo99 13y ago

I would say that government attempts to force data to be handed over reinforce the strength of public key encryption. Since Public Key made its debut, we've known that the only real actual threat to the system was an incredible advance in the realm of factoring. That has not happened. This article talks about the many ways public key can be circumvented, but offers no insight into a mathematical breakthrough. Thus, there will remain a way to encrypt your data, you just need to make sure your keys will always be safe.

chongli 13y ago

Public-key cryptography is a tool. Yeah, I believe the author mistakenly conflated public-key cryptography with the public-key infrastructure (PKI). One is a technology and the other is a set of policies built around a trust model. While the technology remains sound, our confidence in the policies may be weakening. To prepare for this, we may need to look at alternative trust models such as web of trust.

Retric 13y ago

All forms of public key encryption require proof that Alice or Bob are who they say they are or you can setup a man in the middle attack. Without a public key athority to Safely provide the correct public key your stuck with manual key exchanges which can work, but does not scale. If the government has the public key authority's private key they can spoof them and setup man in the middle attacks easily.

antihero 13y ago
Web of trust. So say I meet someone visiting from the US that I trust, he gets my public key and signs it, and vice versa, then I can guarantee to people who have my pubkey that the one I'm sending them is his one.
- Retric 13y ago
  Web of trust has massive scaling issues. The most obvious being a rooted devices can quickly compromise the network and your talking about a huge attack surface if your willing to trust more than one link in the chain. Edit: Realistically if you want secure peer to peer communications your protocalls has to survive when 40+% of peers are compromised and well good luck with that at scale. This seems like a reasonable problem but you also need to be able to revoke certificats.
  - jedbrown 13y ago
    You make it sound like Web of Trust does not include revocation.
  - tekromancr 13y ago
    What about some sort of web of trust model that has a notion of confidence. Lets say I have four people; Alice, Bob, Carol, and me. I know both Bob and Carol, but I don't know Alice directly. Since both Bob and Carol vouch for Alice, I can be fairly sure that Alice is Alice. Now lets say that Bob has reason to believe that Alice has been compromised, so he revokes his link to Alice. Now I have am less confident about Alice, because I have one link to Alice instead of two. Or is this how Web of trust works?

toddsiegel 13y ago

Agreed. Public-key cryptography is fine. Entrusting third parties to protect your privacy is dying. This is something I have been thinking about a lot lately. Users need to take more responsibility for guarding their own privacy. I think there are a lots of business opportunities here: easy to use tools that keep control entirely in Alice's and Bob's hands and public key cryptography is certainly part of the solution.

state 13y ago
I've been thinking quite a lot about that exact thing as well. There must be a way to build great commercial tools that are also truly secure. I'd love to discuss further. Contact info in my profile.
- e3pi 13y ago
  > state 6 hours ago | link | parent | flag > I've been thinking quite a lot about that exact thing as well. There must be a way to build great commercial tools that are also truly secure. I'd love to discuss further. Contact info in my profile. 'state', to solicit this collaboration, would it not be prudent to init a new HN account under a different name?
christo 13y ago
The fact that the agencies have to apply pressure to obtain keys proves that the crypto is working. Therefore, if you have, use and keep secret your own keys, the best-resourced intruders cannot practicably get your data. Of course, http://xkcd.com/538/ http://xkcd.com/538/
- ctdonath 13y ago
  AKA rubber hose cryptanalysis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber-hose_cryptanalysis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber-hose_cryptanalysis

antihero 13y ago

I mean, what's to stop people forming their own signing authorities and distributing the public keys via a trusted method as we do anyway?

mortenjorck 13y ago
The fact that neither you nor I have heard of the projects already doing this.

rdtsc 13y ago

> No evidence in the article substantiates this bold statement. The implication is simple and frightening -- classify it as munitions and making illegal to possess. Remember that Constitution also allows one to have arms. Well arms in 1700s was rifle and that was a top weapon whether for government infantry or dissenting militants. What happened, you can still own arms but you can't own ICBMs, air-2-surface missiles, attack helicopters, nuclear devices etc. So as you can see just because something seems so inalienable, it can still be easily taken (not saying use of public crypto is a Constitutional right, just making a comparison between obvious rights easily stripped away). Not only that, many country do make it illegal to have crypto software. It is not an outlandish proposition. It won't take much to drum up support. Just need 3-4 high profile cases of: terrorists or child molesters using PGP and Joe Sixpack would be pretty easily convinced to call his representative and ask him to vote to make such "enabling tools" illegal.

anigbrowl 13y ago
The implication is simple and frightening -- classify it as munitions and making illegal to possess. You know we went through this in the 1990s and PGP was declassified as a munition, yes? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy#Criminal_investigation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy#Criminal_in... Before taking the claims at face value it's good to do a bit of background research. Also, I generally find anything where every paragraph consists only of a single sentence can safely be ignored.
- rdtsc 13y ago
  Exactly that was my point. It was only 20 year ago. It was declassified as munition it can be reclassified as munitions pretty easily as well. > Before taking the claims at face value it's good to do a bit of background research. It also good to read and understand the whole comment before replying. I didn't say it is illegal (in US, it is in other countries) I said it is not an unreasonably hard step to take.
  - anigbrowl 13y ago
    I read your whole comment, I just don't agree with you. It would be wholly impractical to reclassify PGP as munitions considering its ubiquitous availability. It got declassified in the first place because there was strong legal precedent supporting the publication of the algorithm in book form. I think your fears are unreasonable.

zallarak 13y ago

You are totally nitpicking on semantics. Obviously the general concept of public key encryption is not at risk.

jpttsn 13y ago
"As Feds Demand the Keys, Preparing for the Death of Public-Key Encryption" Obviously.