On Sun, 28 Sep 2003 19:49:22 GMT, Tank Fixer wrote:
In article ,
says...
On Sun, 28 Sep 2003 05:28:35 GMT, Tank Fixer wrote:
In article ,
says...
On Sat, 27 Sep 2003 00:49:38 GMT, Tank Fixer wrote:
In article ,
says...

There's a big building full of computer equipment over at Ft. Meade
that's not sitting there just generating heat.

Yes, it is processing non-encrypted signals traffic, mostly.

Then why can't my brother-in-law who worked there for a bit while in the
Navy not tell me what he did ?

Look, if you have evidence that strong ciphers can be broken, show
us it.

You really think anyone would answer that on usnet ?

IOW you are bull****ting. Thanks for admitting it.

No, I was pointing out that even with my current clearance my brother-in-
law could'nt tell me what he was doing for the NSA computers.

Neither you nor I know if thay can or not.

While it is impossible to know in detail everything about the NSA,
some things can be known or reasonably surmised.

1. we know for certain that some encryption schemes are unbreakable.
One-time pads, for example, or schemes where the ciphertext is
smaller than the key. Of course, as will all symmetric ciphers,
there's the key distribution problem, but in the context we were
discussing -- a battlefield internet -- there is a secure channel to
distribute keys, you can simply exchange data storage media around
the battalion. (Sometimes, there is no secure channel, which is when
public-key encryption gets useful).

2. we know for certain that some algorithms are computationally
intractable, i.e. there's no way to run them faster. This followes
from Turing's Halting Problem. It may be possible that in the future
quantum computing will have some effect on some such problems; but
that's entirely speculative.

3. we know for certain that ideas are often independently invented
by multiple people in multiple places; we can therefore reasonably
surmise that what the NSA knows now, others will know within a few
years.

4. we know for certain that the US govmt is encouraging people to
use AES in its civilian Internet infrastructure

5. we can reasonably surmise that the US govmt thinks that no
potential adversary will be able to crack AES in the forseeable
future. The largest potential adversary might be China, which has
about 1/10th the resources of the USA, which is equivalent to adding
3 bits on a symmetric key, or waiting 5 years for computers to get
faster.

6. From 3, 4, and 5, we can reasonably surmise that the NSA cannot
currently crack AES.

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