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Re: How Is the NSA Breaking So Much Crypto?

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In article <637756e68148fcbce5a733a00e35faff@hoi-polloi.org>
Anonymous <anonymous@hoi-polloi.org> wrote:
>
> Via SlashDot.org
> There have been rumors for years that the NSA can decrypt a
> significant fraction of encrypted Internet traffic. In 2012, James
> Bamford published an article quoting anonymous former NSA officials
> stating that the agency had achieved a "computing breakthrough" that
> gave them "the ability to crack current public encryption." The
> Snowden documents also hint at some extraordinary capabilities: they
> show that NSA has built extensive infrastructure to intercept and
> decrypt VPN traffic and suggest that the agency can decrypt at least
> some HTTPS and SSH connections on demand.
>
> However, the documents do not explain how these breakthroughs work,
> and speculation about possible backdoors or broken algorithms has been
> rampant in the technical community. Yesterday at ACM CCS, one of the
> leading security research venues, we and twelve coauthors presented a
> paper that we think solves this technical mystery.
>
> If a client and server are speaking Diffie-Hellman, they first need to
> agree on a large prime number with a particular form. There seemed to
> be no reason why everyone couldn't just use the same prime, and, in
> fact, many applications tend to use standardized or hard-coded primes.
> But there was a very important detail that got lost in translation
> between the mathematicians and the practitioners: an adversary can
> perform a single enormous computation to "crack" a particular prime,
> then easily break any individual connection that uses that prime.
>
> https://weakdh.org/imperfect-forward-secrecy-ccs15.pdf

This is not a new problem.

http://instantlogic.net/publications/DiffieHellman.pdf

4 x 8 node 6600 based VAXClusters combined with a Cray were 
routinely cracking this years ago.

To be fair, most of the exploits were the result of lazy, stupid 
or incompetent programmers.

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Re: How Is the NSA Breaking So Much Crypto? Jeremy Bentham <nobody@anemone.mooo.com> - 2015-10-21 23:39 +0200
  Re: How Is the NSA Breaking So Much Crypto? Big Bad Bob <BigBadBob-at-mrp3-dot-com@testing.local> - 2015-10-21 14:47 -0700
    Re: How Is the NSA Breaking So Much Crypto? GreyCloud <cumulus@mist.com> - 2015-10-21 16:42 -0600
      Re: How Is the NSA Breaking So Much Crypto? meagain <rick0.merrill@gmail.com> - 2015-10-27 15:31 -0400
        Re: How Is the NSA Breaking So Much Crypto? William Unruh <unruh@invalid.ca> - 2015-10-27 19:47 +0000
          Re: How Is the NSA Breaking So Much Crypto? GreyCloud <cumulus@mist.com> - 2015-10-27 15:47 -0600
        A real quantum computer, doing real work, doesn't exist. Jeff-Relf.Me <@.> - 2015-10-27 12:50 -0700
          Re: A real quantum computer, doing real work, doesn't exist. Peter Köhlmann <peter-koehlmann@t-online.de> - 2015-10-27 21:18 +0100
            Re: A real quantum computer, doing real work, doesn't exist. William Unruh <unruh@invalid.ca> - 2015-10-27 20:49 +0000
            Re: A real quantum computer, doing real work, doesn't exist. Siri Cruz <chine.bleu@yahoo.com> - 2015-10-27 13:53 -0700
              Re: A real quantum computer, doing real work, doesn't exist. William Unruh <unruh@invalid.ca> - 2015-10-27 21:43 +0000
                Better Randomness ? ! Jeff-Relf.Me <@.> - 2015-10-27 22:41 -0700
                Re: Better Randomness ? ! dorayme <do_ray_me@bigpond.com> - 2015-10-28 19:41 +1100
                Re: Better Randomness ? ! moroney@world.std.spaamtrap.com (Michael Moroney) - 2015-10-28 14:33 +0000
                Re: Better Randomness ? ! chrisv <chrisv@nospam.invalid> - 2015-10-28 09:36 -0500
                Re: Better Randomness ? ! "Ezekiel" <zeke@nosuchemail.com> - 2015-10-28 10:46 -0400
                QueryPerformanceCounter() -- Better Randomness. Jeff-Relf.Me <@.> - 2015-10-28 08:28 -0700
                Re: QueryPerformanceCounter() -- Better Randomness. "Ezekiel" <zeke@nosuchemail.com> - 2015-10-28 11:48 -0400
                RDRAND has numerous problems. Jeff-Relf.Me <@.> - 2015-10-28 09:35 -0700
                Re: QueryPerformanceCounter() -- Better Randomness. moroney@world.std.spaamtrap.com (Michael Moroney) - 2015-10-28 16:17 +0000
                QueryPerformanceCounter() -- Better Randomness. Jeff-Relf.Me <@.> - 2015-10-28 09:50 -0700
                Re: A real quantum computer, doing real work, doesn't exist. chrisv <chrisv@nospam.invalid> - 2015-10-28 07:07 -0500
            Re: A real quantum computer, doing real work, doesn't exist. "Rice Rocketeer" <ricerocketeer@somemail.com> - 2015-10-28 11:57 +0100
          Re: A real quantum computer, doing real work, doesn't exist. GreyCloud <cumulus@mist.com> - 2015-10-27 15:47 -0600
            Re: A real quantum computer, doing real work, doesn't exist. Siri Cruz <chine.bleu@yahoo.com> - 2015-10-27 15:38 -0700
              Re: A real quantum computer, doing real work, doesn't exist. Davoud <star@sky.net> - 2015-10-27 22:29 -0400
                Re: A real quantum computer, doing real work, doesn't exist. GreyCloud <cumulus@mist.com> - 2015-10-27 23:02 -0600
                Re: A real quantum computer, doing real work, doesn't exist. Anonymous <nobody@remailer.paranoici.org> - 2015-10-28 10:19 +0000
              Re: A real quantum computer, doing real work, doesn't exist. GreyCloud <cumulus@mist.com> - 2015-10-27 22:58 -0600
            Re: A real quantum computer, doing real work, doesn't exist. William Unruh <unruh@invalid.ca> - 2015-10-27 22:47 +0000
              Re: A real quantum computer, doing real work, doesn't exist. GreyCloud <cumulus@mist.com> - 2015-10-27 23:34 -0600
        Re: How Is the NSA Breaking So Much Crypto? GreyCloud <cumulus@mist.com> - 2015-10-27 15:46 -0600

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