Silk Road forums

Discussion => Newbie discussion => Topic started by: HollaHollaHolla on September 03, 2013, 05:40 am

Title: NSA Hard at Work @ Decryption
Post by: HollaHollaHolla on September 03, 2013, 05:40 am
I first saw it on a regular news site over clearnet and was quite surprised to not hear any thing about it  in these forums. Only one post detailed the leak, and nobody really responded. It can be found here:

http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion/index.php?topic=208791.msg1505233#msg1505233

But anyway...

It turns out a document leaked by Edward Snowden had a bit more information about the government's collective $52 billion surveillance program that might be of news to all us on the road. Here's an excerpt detailing the most important facet of info:

"'Also,' Clapper writes in a line marked 'top secret,' 'we are investing in groundbreaking cryptanalytic capabilities to defeat adversarial cryptography and exploit internet traffic.'

The Post’s article doesn’t detail the 'groundbreaking cryptanalytic capabilities' Clapper mentions, and there’s no elaboration in the portion of the document published by the paper. But the document shows that 21 percent of the intelligence budget — around $11 billion — is dedicated to the Consolidated Cryptologic Program that staffs 35,000 employees in the NSA and the armed forces.

In a WIRED story in March of last year — the pre-Snowden era of NSA reporting — James Bamford reported that the NSA secretly made some sort of 'enormous breakthrough' in cryptanalysis several years earlier."



What exactly do we suppose this breakthrough could have been? Do we think ten billion dollars is enough to put the government significantly close to capabilities dangerous to technologies we all regularly use, say Tor or even PGP eventually? Would love to hear any opinion on the subject.
Title: Re: NSA Hard at Work @ Decryption
Post by: m1nuteman on September 03, 2013, 05:50 am
I would say any of the technologies we use that is new and or has been upgraded in the last couple years is safe everything else I would be a tad concerened about given they have had a reasonable amount of time to crack.
Title: Re: NSA Hard at Work @ Decryption
Post by: HollaHollaHolla on September 03, 2013, 06:02 am
Yeah. I just figure its probably referring to the government being able to look past https encryptions over clearnet, but you never know? A bit surprised no one else heard about this though.

But with 35,000 employees and basements full of supercomputers, the door is always open. I would imagine you could get maybe millions of computations a second, and before long, its just like a million monkeys with typewriters... And all it takes is one to put together Shakespeare and blow the lid off something.

Could also just be media misinformation; make you feel like your technology is less secure when it actually is.
Title: Re: NSA Hard at Work @ Decryption
Post by: m1nuteman on September 03, 2013, 06:25 am
Wouldn't it be nice if the NSA didn't care we were using SR and just didn't do anything about besides collect information.