General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWell if the NSA can decrypt so probably can other countries' spy agencies
We are told that the NSA can spy on anyone in this country using fancy tools however has anyone thought how many other countries are looking at your 'stuff.' Most of them must get very bored doing this when they see youtube videos of how to knit or skateboard?
dairydog91
(951 posts)But lots of evidence that the U.S. gov't bullies U.S. companies into giving them backdoor access to their encrypted info, something other countries really can't do. Doesn't mean anyone has developed a quick way of cracking heavy encryption.
longship
(40,416 posts)Public Key Cryptography is based on simple number theory but produces algorithms which are relatively easy to execute in one direction but require exhaustive search in the other. These mathematical functions do not have back doors no matter what anybody says.
And they can be made arbitrarily complex by just making the key larger. In other words, crypto can be made as secure as is needed to prevent the NSA from peeking just by extending the length of the keys.
It really is simple. Math is cool.
PowerToThePeople
(9,610 posts)Get a GPU farm together similar to what the bitcoin people do. I mean, how much processing power can the US Gov purchase? They have the brain power to program decoding algorithms, probably recruiting the best and brightest mathematicians in the country. I thought I read an article on slashdot one time about jumping a dimension in cpu architecture. They were close to getting an x-y-z cpu (or was it transistor?) vs the x-y that we have now. This would essentially obsolete ANY encryption done on any current generation cpus.
longship
(40,416 posts)The same algorithm can be made arbitrarily complex just by increasing key length. Many of the algorithms depend on very long prime factors and factoring large numbers cannot be done easily by any method no matter how much computing power one has.
And there is no back door to these algorithms. In fact, they are often openly published. Knowing how they work doesn't help you crack them.
It's mathematics, man. It's very cool. And the NSA cannot do anything about it.
Rosa Luxemburg
(28,627 posts)there probably someone in China trying. Don't get me wrong I like Chinese people.
longship
(40,416 posts)The algorithm is specifically designed to be a one way trap door. It only goes one way.