full-disclosure - Wiretap or Magic Lantern?

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Message-ID: <200404071921.47534.fulldisc@ultratux.org>
From: fulldisc at ultratux.org (Maarten)
Subject: Wiretap or Magic Lantern?

On Wednesday 07 April 2004 16:52, Brent Colflesh wrote:
> | 2., The terrorsts are not stupid, they use strong encryption and there
> | is proof that PGP repels NSA.
>
> Please disclose this proof.

There can be, of course, no such proof.  
Had there been, we would've seen people massively upping their respective 
keysizes from 128 bit to, what? 768 bits, or even substantially bigger still. 

However, just assuming the best / the worst would certainly suggest that the 
NSA has access to the utmost advanced technology -including quantum computing 
in whatever form it is currently feasible- so therefore one cannot make any 
statements as to whether any communication is safe, or for how long.

As always, economics dictate whether a given message will be worth the effort 
to [try to] decrypt it.  In most all cases brute forcing is by far the most 
expensive one.  Torture, equipment-seizing, social engineering and oldskool 
spying equipment are amongst the most likely ways to get to any plaintext.
The NSA has the means and the resources to dedicate millions of CPUs to 
decrypting one single message, but why would they? There are much cheaper 
ways to get to the goal.  Therefore, it is not really relevant if the NSA can 
or cannot decrypt a message (given enough effort).

It would be another thing if they could routinely decrypt messages. My guess 
is, if they could, it would be the single most closely guarded secret the NSA 
has ever possessed; they would make certain it remains a secret at all cost.

Maarten

-- 
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