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http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/9/5/nsa-successfullycrackedencryptionreports.html

Leaks by former security contractor Edward Snowden show the National Security Agency has cracked into Internet communications previously believed to be protected by the use of encryption, news reports said Thursday.

The New York Times, Pro Publica and The Guardian, working in partnership on the story, reported that documents obtained from Snowden show that the NSA and Britain's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) successfully broke through encryption barriers in 2010.

"Vast amounts of encrypted Internet data which have up till now been discarded are now exploitable," the reports said, citing one of the GCHQ documents.

The documents reportedly show that the NSA's anti-encryption methods are closely guarded, and analysts are told, "Do not ask about or speculate on sources or methods," The Guardian reported.

The leaked documents also reveal that -- aside from using supercomputers and court orders -- the NSA would spend as much as $250 million per year to "covertly influence" tech companies to create loopholes in their products so the U.S. agency can easily access user information.

The latest revelations follow months of ongoing leaks from Snowden, who is now in Russia on a temporary asylum visa, exposing the NSA's efforts to collect data on civilians in the U.S. and abroad by tapping phone calls and Internet activity.

Al Jazeera has reached out to the NSA for comment and has not heard back from the agency yet.

Intelligence officials asked the Guardian, New York Times and ProPublica not to publish this article, saying that it might prompt foreign targets to switch to new forms of encryption or communications that would be harder to collect or read.

Good to see at least some journalists still have a spine. Maybe our intelligence agencies will begin to consider the fact that if they treat the entire country as the enemy we're going to do the same back to them?

And this is why I hope this article completely destroys their ability to spy on people:

How keys are acquired is shrouded in secrecy, but independent cryptographers say many are probably collected by hacking into companies’ computer servers, where they are stored. To keep such methods secret, the N.S.A. shares decrypted messages with other agencies only if the keys could have been acquired through legal means.

IOW: "the law doesn't apply to us, we'll spy on you if we feel like it".

“Information is the currency of democracy.”
― Thomas Jefferson

Well then in this case the government has a monopoly it seems...

NSA Successfully Cracked Encryption

Cook successfully prepares a meal.

CIA successfully gathers intelligence.

Frazzled successfully wiener dogs.

Student successfully learns subject.

I'm not up on my court cases, but whenever this issue comes up, I always wonder the same question.

Has any US court ever ruled that the right to privacy extends to internet communication? I can definitely see it extending to things stored on your computer, but it always seemed reasonable to me that once I sent any information out into the world, I could no longer have any reasonable expectation of privacy attached to it. Clearly, majority opinion in America is that there IS an expectation of privacy on that, but has any court ever ruled it so? And if so, has that ruling been challenged, and what was the outcome of THAT ruling? Anyone know?

Do you think the government should open your letters and tap your phone?

An email or Skye conversation is the modern equivalent.

Why have a spying agency, if it isn't supposed to gather intelligence?

Perhaps you have not read 1984.

 Mr Hyena wrote:
Why have a spying agency, if it isn't supposed to gather intelligence?

Yeah, just bring the spies in and show them a picture of intelligence gathering...

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Perhaps you have not read 1984.

Its a good example of how society should be.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Alfndrate wrote:

 Mr Hyena wrote:
Why have a spying agency, if it isn't supposed to gather intelligence?

Yeah, just bring the spies in and show them a picture of intelligence gathering...

I'm sure that will catch a lot of criminals.

 Mr Hyena wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Perhaps you have not read 1984.

Its a good example of how society should be.

Double plus good.

 Mr Hyena wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Perhaps you have not read 1984.

Its a good example of how society should be.

Yeah that.... and Animal Farm are great examples of great society's !!

GG

 Mr Hyena wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Perhaps you have not read 1984.

Its a good example of how society should be.

Indeed, perhaps I should sit around and wait for the Thought Police to come knocking on my door because I chose to have expressions that went against the Party and what they stand for.

 Alfndrate wrote:

 Mr Hyena wrote:
Why have a spying agency, if it isn't supposed to gather intelligence?

Yeah, just bring the spies in and show them a picture of intelligence gathering...

I'm sure that will catch a lot of criminals.

Have they caught any criminals with the intelligence they're gathering from our internet communications?

A website like DakkaDakka must set off the alarm bells all the time.

It's like when I listed a Dragon Karl Morser kit on eBay and got a warning about the rules on selling guns.

 Peregrine wrote:

And this is why I hope this article completely destroys their ability to spy on people:

How keys are acquired is shrouded in secrecy, but independent cryptographers say many are probably collected by hacking into companies’ computer servers, where they are stored. To keep such methods secret, the N.S.A. shares decrypted messages with other agencies only if the keys could have been acquired through legal means.

IOW: "the law doesn't apply to us, we'll spy on you if we feel like it".

To be fair, there's not proof that the NSA was in fact "hacking into companies' computer servers". That's just speculation by "independent cyrptographers".

Not that I don't think the NSA could or would do it, I'm just saying that nothing's been verified or anything.

And honestly our spy agencies (along with many other countries' agencies) have become jokes in the rather quiet period between the end of the Cold War and 9/11. Spycraft is really a dying art it seems.

Hmmm...
So we should just adopt a policy of broad spectrum lying?
Obviously with a touch of truth mixed in and some really big fibs but otherwise everyone should now just lie about everything.

 streamdragon wrote:

To be fair, there's not proof that the NSA was in fact "hacking into companies' computer servers". That's just speculation by "independent cyrptographers".

Not that I don't think the NSA could or would do it, I'm just saying that nothing's been verified or anything.

Unless the NSA has access to truly revolutionary breakthroughs in computer processing capability, the only way to reliably crack a 256 bit cypher is if you have access to the key in the first place, because if you try to brute force it, lets put it this way:

If you assume:
Every person on the planet owns 10 computers.
There are 7 billion people on the planet.
Each of these computers can test 1 billion key combinations per second.
On average, you can crack the key after testing 50% of the possibilities.

Then the earth's population can crack one encryption key in 77,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years!

PhantomViper wrote:

Unless the NSA has access to truly revolutionary breakthroughs in computer processing capability, the only way to reliably crack a 256 bit cypher is if you have access to the key in the first place, because if you try to brute force it, lets put it this way:

I'm sure they have a quantum computers. A lot of what's thought to be possible with quantum processing is stunning. Talking breaking high bit encryption in minutes.

 Mr Hyena wrote:
Why have a spying agency, if it isn't supposed to gather intelligence?

Why have laws, if the government can just break them whenever it feels like it?

 streamdragon wrote:
To be fair, there's not proof that the NSA was in fact "hacking into companies' computer servers". That's just speculation by "independent cyrptographers".

It sounds like the speculation is only about methods for obtaining the keys, and the second sentence is quoting leaked NSA policy about not sharing information unless they can plausibly pretend that it was legally obtained (and therefore admitting that they illegally obtain information).

PhantomViper wrote:
Unless the NSA has access to truly revolutionary breakthroughs in computer processing capability, the only way to reliably crack a 256 bit cypher is if you have access to the key in the first place, because if you try to brute force it, lets put it this way:

But that's obviously not what is happening. The encryption breaking in question is either by finding a flaw in the algorithm used (for example, the random number generator doesn't actually give truly random numbers) so that the theoretical 256 bits is really a much lower number, getting the keys through methods other than brute force (weak password, legal threats to force the manufacturer to give it up, etc), or attacking the system that uses the encryption instead of the encryption itself (adding a backdoor to the computer's operating system that reports the key when you enter it, etc). The article even quotes the NSA acknowledging that properly used encryption is unbreakable, but that doesn't mean that they can't break it on vast amounts of internet traffic.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 daedalus wrote:
I'm sure they have a quantum computers. A lot of what's thought to be possible with quantum processing is stunning. Talking breaking high bit encryption in minutes.

Well, theoretically it is stunning. Given that we haven't seen any leaks about massive breakthroughs in hardware technology (that are somehow kept secret from everyone else working on the problem) I think it's a lot more likely that the NSA is attacking the system that uses the encryption with the same old conventional PCs/legal threats/etc rather than brute forcing it.

 purplefood wrote:
Hmmm...
So we should just adopt a policy of broad spectrum lying?
Obviously with a touch of truth mixed in and some really big fibs but otherwise everyone should now just lie about everything.

No, just strive for truthiness in all things!

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Do you think the government should open your letters and tap your phone?

An email or Skye conversation is the modern equivalent.

Mail sent through the USPS, no. The privacy of that is assured, specifically, with a few exceptions, such as prisoners. I kind of have ALWAYS assumed that the government was tracking who I called and when. I wouldn't really be opposed on any legal grounds to someone tapping my phone from an external location. It isn't like bugging my house. It's listening in on a conversation that I'm having with someone across town, or across the world. Within my own property, I certainly have the expectation of privacy. But beyond that, I personally always assumed that privacy goes out the window. Since phone and internet communication has to go through SOME medium (the air, a wire, something) to get where it's going, then in transit it becomes vulnerable to interception. What's more, I don't own those transit mediums. In the case of phone lines or anything else transmitted over a hard cable, then I kind of thought it then became an issue between the owner of the cable/wire, and the government, and always assumed there were methods of obtaining access to my communications legally. Not even hard ones. Transmission that has to be directed via waves of energy through the air are, I always thought, even more vulnerable from a legal standpoint, since the US has traditionally been allowed to legally exert influence over what is and is not transmitted through its airspace. (As it was originally explained to me, this is what allows the FCC to operate legally, despite the fact that what they do seems to frequently violate the first ammendment.)

I'm not saying I'm right (it's a tricky issue, and I'm not as informed as many people seem to believe that they are) but just explaining why I'm never particularly concerned by these sorts of stories. For my own education, though, has there ever been a court case that upheld a right to privacy with externally transmitted internet communication? I did a cursory search, but couldn't find one.

 Jimsolo wrote:


Mail sent through the USPS, no.

Full stop.

Why?

PhantomViper wrote:

 streamdragon wrote:

To be fair, there's not proof that the NSA was in fact "hacking into companies' computer servers". That's just speculation by "independent cyrptographers".

Not that I don't think the NSA could or would do it, I'm just saying that nothing's been verified or anything.

Unless the NSA has access to truly revolutionary breakthroughs in computer processing capability, the only way to reliably crack a 256 bit cypher is if you have access to the key in the first place, because if you try to brute force it, lets put it this way:

If you assume:
Every person on the planet owns 10 computers.
There are 7 billion people on the planet.
Each of these computers can test 1 billion key combinations per second.
On average, you can crack the key after testing 50% of the possibilities.

Then the earth's population can crack one encryption key in 77,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years!

They secretly have a copy of Dr. Who's sonic screwdriver, that Torchwood lent them.

 Mr Hyena wrote:
Why have a spying agency, if it isn't supposed to gather intelligence?

They are - on suspected terrorists. Not the public at large, and not to the extent that they have been.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mr Hyena wrote:
I'm sure that will catch a lot of criminals.

Except that most intelligence gathering done by the NSA is supposed to be for the purposes of national security. Catching criminals is the job of the Police.

If the terrorists were smart they'd try to blow up some of the seven internet central hubs that run the majority of the world's internet. Or so my limited understanding tells me.

It'd be like Fight Club but more super villain.

Good luck being intelligent with no internet NSA. You'll be back to index cards and binoculars.

On the other hand we'd be totally at the mercy of the bad guys, and out of an internet... So it'd be bad.

 Mr Hyena wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Perhaps you have not read 1984.

Its a good example of how society should be.

You're funny. I almost thought you were serious for a second.

 daedalus wrote:

 Jimsolo wrote:


Mail sent through the USPS, no.

Full stop.

Why?

Because there ARE explicit restrictions against people opening your mail (government employees included). So 'no,' the government shouldn't be able to just open my mail without my permission.

 Ahtman wrote:

NSA Successfully Cracked Encryption

Cook successfully prepares a meal.

CIA successfully gathers intelligence.

Frazzled successfully wiener dogs.

Student successfully learns subject.

This, I saw the title and was like "Alright then... good job everyone?"

Librarian successfully picks up book.

Clock successfully moves to next hour.

Fire successfully burns hot.

Dakka successfully blames victim.

Those goddam innocent members of the public deserve everything they've got coming to them.

 Col. Tartleton wrote:
If the terrorists were smart they'd try to blow up some of the seven internet central hubs that run the majority of the world's internet. Or so my limited understanding tells me.

It'd be like Fight Club but more super villain.

Good luck being intelligent with no internet NSA. You'll be back to index cards and binoculars.

On the other hand we'd be totally at the mercy of the bad guys, and out of an internet... So it'd be bad.

Wasn't that the plot of the 4th Die Hard movie?