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Obama's statement on Cyber Defense; days after Edward Snowden says we should focus on Cyber Defense instead of Offense.
NPR- Obama: If we're going to be connected, then we need to be protected
President Obama said Monday he wants the federal government to do more to prevent cyber attacks. He outlined a series of proposals designed to safeguard personal data — steps he'll talk more about in next week's State of the Union address.
"Dozens of software companies have already signed a voluntary pledge not to misuse students' data. But some in the industry worry that a new federal law would go too far."
Snowden's interview Transcript
Snowden: "DES was actually stronger than we thought it was at the time because the NSA had secretly manipulated the standard to make it stronger back in the day, which was weird, but that shows the difference in thinking between the ’80s and the ’90s."
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday January 14 2015, @08:52AM
Should one assume based on this that the AES algorithm is compromised ?
And what other cryptos can be assumed to be compromised ?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 14 2015, @03:31PM
They are all compromised. Every last one. It is only a matter of computer resources and time. Then on top of that you have a large group of math and CS phds working to crack it. At least that was what I was taught in college (25 years ago). You dont think they have those acres of computers just to hold data and run their email do you? With encryption you want to slow people down long enough for the information to be irrelevant. It will not stop them. Even then you may no longer consider it relevant but they can glean some extra information out of it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 14 2015, @08:20PM
They are all compromised. Every last one.
Hand over your evidence. The NSA has some smart and corrupt people, but they aren't magic.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 14 2015, @09:58PM
There's no evidence to post. This is a fact. What one encrypts, another can decrypt (brute force, not coerced decryption). As was said earlier, it's a matter of making it so hard, cost preventative and time consuming to decrypt that it's simply not worth it to most people to even try, not to make it impossible.
However, criminal organizations looking for something to exploit, governments who seem to think it's their right to snoop on our communications and Universities simply researching if it can be done feasibly without having acres of supercomputers crunching numbers are a few of the organizations that have the potential resources to pull brute force decryption off.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday January 14 2015, @09:49PM
It's defintely better than any roll-your-own primitive for 99.999999% of humans, that is beyond question.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday January 15 2015, @08:09AM
I'm thinking in comparison to other encryption standards.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 15 2015, @01:56PM
Clean algorithms do not do anyone any good if the software and hardware has backdoors.
Seed numbers are tiny, keys are small. It could be that none of it from any normal computer or phone needs to travel over the Internet or at all. I wonder what the resolution is for quartets of ELINT or MASINT satellites.
If it is feasible then they're dong that in addition to everything else. Considering the amount of data they collect it is a safe bet that everything is compromised.