Posted on 12/26/2018 6:04:48 PM PST by yesthatjallen
Anyone familiar with crytography knows brute Force is never used to decrypt anything. The NSA uses extremely large prime numbers to decrypt things like AES. For every algorithm like AES there is always a large prime and associated algorithm the decrypt it regardless of the original key used.
Behind all of the talk of globalization, “all cultures are equal”, etc. - it turns out the Anglosphere still dominates the world.
If the public can be trusted with guns they can be trusted to secure their own communications.
I admit to having only a basic understanding of this type of thing.
Are you are saying that the very algorithms used by the intelligence communities around the world are completely decryptable by each other, or do they have special types of encryption, each having their own flavor, that cannot be decrypted?
Ironic, isn’t it?
Other nations don’t have our computational capabilities, so, no, they cannot decrypt our military grade encryption. AES is approved for use because of this, but we do not use it for our more sensitive commu ications.
Thanks for that explanation...as I said, I don’t dabble in this, you sound like you know more about it.
So, the only thing holding other nations back from being able to decrypt our communication is a lack of computational power?
If you don’t want to answer for any reason, I understand.
That and years of effort. 20 years from now all bets are off. Everyone has computers now and many nations are working hard at prime factoring. We’re still ahead and will stay there, but they’ll have the AES primes with 10 years. It is why cryptography must always evolve, to stay ahead.
War in a different arena...
Been using PGP for about 20 years. The biggest problem with it, is that not enough people understand well enough how it works, to make it useful.
Feel free to prove this any time.
I do not think you really understand how and why large primes are used in cryptography.
I have a group of friends who are preppers. Had to hold a class for them where they all brought the laptops over and had an OpenPGP install / class
Regardless of what he is saying, it's not true.
Cryptography is based on mathematics. AES, which is the NIST standard these days is secure given sufficient keysizes and proper implementation. There have been weaknesses discovered in the key schedules with reduced-round variants of the algorithm. Those were academic attacks that have not been shown to be effective on even modern hardware-specific implementations.
The biggest threat with online encryption (other than the ever popular rubber hoses) are man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks that are possible because of the way the internet has evolved over the years. You'd be surprised at how large a percentage of all internet traffic passes through a very few physical locations.
As a user of cryptography, one of the biggest threats you might face is the government hacking into your computer and stealing your private keys. This is especially true if you're still stuck in the dark ages running MS-Windows.
The government doesn't need to be able to actually 'break' an encryption algorithm when there are other much cheaper angles they can play.
That was the way I have always viewed it...the key sentence right there.
Very cool. Way back when the cypherpunks mailing list was an active thing, they used to occasionally hold keysigning parties where folks could get together and build a web of trust personally.
Did you go over revocation certs and how to do rollovers and such? Even with the massive keysizes you can use these days, I still don't recommend more than a 5 year lifespan of a key. If you generate a new key at year 4 and sign with the old, you can maintain a rolling chain of trust, with a one year overlap on the two keys.
Thanks, kid, but adults don’t need you silly challenges.
Sorta.
I advocate a truly “public” key that is on a public searchable server. Mine is on MIT’s server. That is my public, publik key. Usually not configured to expire but mannually replace every 10 years or so.
Then I have a public, “private” key that I only share between friends.
There is nothing at all silly about that. Put up or shut up. I get tired of bozos making claims like this about things they apparently know nothing about. (which is quite obvious from the way you worded the claim).
Yeah, I used to post on keyservers. Probably should update my stuff out there, but I figure most people I would want to communicate securely would have more solid channels to get my keys. Keyservers are a good way to distribute a key, but it doesn't speak to the authenticity of a given key unless it has signatures on it of people you do trust to validate them.
I've created a PGP key for FreeRepublic (zeugma@freerepublic.com) and put it on my Freeper Homepage
With this, you can be reasonably sure that this is my key from a validation standpoint, as it merely represents itself as zeugma here at FR. (Don't think the email actually works, as I always check that box when I donate, but haven't ever actually been able to successfully get it to work). However, for use in freepmail, it would certainly be effective.
Then I have a public, “private” key that I only share between friends.
Yeah, I have different keys for different purposes as well. I think most people would get confused by that though, sadly.
I get tied of internet nerds like yourself proclaiming they have all the knowledge. What’s next, you going to school us on EMP??
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