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> If the NSA said, "Our super smart brain trust figured out how to own your stuff with math five years ago ... ha ha!", I think we would be Totally Fine with th

by mpyne 13y ago

> If the NSA said, "Our super smart brain trust figured out how to own your stuff with math five years ago ... ha ha!", I think we would be Totally Fine with that. Hats off to them for winning that game, but at least they played mostly fairly. (In theory.) I disagree. Certainly they'll be doing that too, but breaking crypto is hazardous to the populace independently of how it's broken, right? Either way from NSA's perspective they are fighting a war, with terrorism, with other nation's crypto efforts, etc. In that context there are very few "unfair" ways to fight. And indeed, the U.S. has done something like this to a certain Soviet pipeline, as I recall. Besides, this at least leaves open the possibility of like-minded people to maintain countermeasures. If crypto is broken in general then we're all naked. If weak implementations are weak then we would need to be fixing those anyways. I just wish I knew which one it is we're looking at.

nathan_long 13y ago
>> breaking crypto is hazardous to the populace independently of how it's broken, right? Breaking crypto from the outside proves that it's breakable; if the NSA can do it, it's just a matter of time until others do. Undermining cryto from the inside means deliberately exposing all communicates to increased risk of hacking by anyone, anywhere. Quite different.
- mpyne 13y ago
  > Undermining cryto from the inside means deliberately exposing all communicates to increased risk of hacking by anyone, anywhere Well, that does depend on how they weaken it. If it gets weakened such that it goes from "impossible" to "nation-states can crack" then there's still only 3-4 agencies in the whole world that could decrypt. But that would also tend to preclude passive wideranging cryptanalysis, which is what I'm sure NSA would prefer to be able to do.
  - nathan_long 13y ago
    > If it gets weakened such that it goes from "impossible" to "nation-states can crack" then there's still only 3-4 agencies in the whole world that could decrypt. You'd have to be talking about a gigantic change for it to benefit them. I want my crypto to take 10 billion years to crack; intelligence agencies want to crack it in a week. And what they can crack in a week today, hobbyists will be able to crack in a day a few years from now. Weakening crypto means opening it to every criminal in the world. Computers get faster and secret backdoors get leaked. If it isn't safe from everyone, in the long run, it isn't safe from anyone.

by mpyne 13y ago

nathan_long 13y ago

>> breaking crypto is hazardous to the populace independently of how it's broken, right? Breaking crypto from the outside proves that it's breakable; if the NSA can do it, it's just a matter of time until others do. Undermining cryto from the inside means deliberately exposing all communicates to increased risk of hacking by anyone, anywhere. Quite different.

mpyne 13y ago
> Undermining cryto from the inside means deliberately exposing all communicates to increased risk of hacking by anyone, anywhere Well, that does depend on how they weaken it. If it gets weakened such that it goes from "impossible" to "nation-states can crack" then there's still only 3-4 agencies in the whole world that could decrypt. But that would also tend to preclude passive wideranging cryptanalysis, which is what I'm sure NSA would prefer to be able to do.
- nathan_long 13y ago
  > If it gets weakened such that it goes from "impossible" to "nation-states can crack" then there's still only 3-4 agencies in the whole world that could decrypt. You'd have to be talking about a gigantic change for it to benefit them. I want my crypto to take 10 billion years to crack; intelligence agencies want to crack it in a week. And what they can crack in a week today, hobbyists will be able to crack in a day a few years from now. Weakening crypto means opening it to every criminal in the world. Computers get faster and secret backdoors get leaked. If it isn't safe from everyone, in the long run, it isn't safe from anyone.