328
submitted 2 weeks ago by misk@sopuli.xyz to c/technology@lemmy.world
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] frezik@midwest.social 23 points 2 weeks ago

There's plenty of publicly funded research for that, yes.

Three letter agencies also want to protect their own nation's secrets. They have as much interest in breaking it as they do protecting against it.

[-] MonkCanatella@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 weeks ago

yes of course, and nuclear arsenal build up doesn't exist because govts have that kinda foresight

[-] frezik@midwest.social 13 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Except there's evidence they do, in fact, go both directions.

For example, DES had its s-boxes messed with by the NSA. At the time, the thought was that they were intentionally weakening it. Some years later, public cryptographers developed differential cryptanalysis for breaking ciphers. They found that the new s-boxes in DES made it resistant to differential cryptanalysis. It appears the NSA had already developed the technique and had made DES stronger, not weaker. Because again, they need to protect their own stuff, too, and they used and promoted DES to get there.

They also gave it a really short key that was expected to be broken by the '90s, which is also exactly what happened.

They appear to be going a similar direction with elliptic curves. They seem to be resistant against certain attacks, and the NSA was promoting them earlier than most public cryptographers.

this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2024
328 points (98.8% liked)

Technology

60112 readers
4312 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS