New NSA leaks: does crypto still work?

boing
21

After a good night’s sleep I looked at this and realized it was stupid.

  • I should have put this somewhere else and put a link to it here.
  • I should not be trying to design protocol in the middle of the night.
  • This proposal contains several critical mistakes.

So, the latest version of this proposal will be available at: https://it.wiki.usu.edu/20150101_STA_MilesCrazyCrypto

Probably the greatest mistake I have noticed so far was using prior discarded key info to pad current messages. This obvious mistake leaves a bread crumb trail into the past. If you record prior messages and ever manage to crack or break one, you can follow the trail through prior messages. This is exactly the kind of mistake that the NSA loves to find or create.

Just goes to show that every one of us has a little NSA helper voice in our heads. OR maybe I am an NSA plant. Could go either way. After all, I am located in Utah. Would I even know if I was a NSA plant?

AAAaand I just realized I am posting in the middle of the night again.

If you think about it, info in the past may have more value to the NSA than similar info in the future. Info in the past actually exists. Info in the future is just a possibility. The info in the past is always growing in amount and value. Future info always seems to have the same value. The NSA appears to be locked into a short-sighted, non-strategic mindset. They are bound to overvalue the past and undervalue the future. They may be controlled by their desire for past info, even if it is currently inaccessible due to crypto.

Maybe they placed their new archive/repository in Utah because they valued it above all and that was the most defensible place they could imagine that had easy access to the major interior fiber paths. If push comes to shove, this location gives them access to unique defense strategies.

1 Like
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Bury your feet in the ground. Ask somebody to water you regularly. If your toes grow into the nearest communication cables, then yes, you are a NSA plant.

That’s entirely normal.

Re the protocol, consider using it merely for encapsulating already implemented SSH traffic, if possible as an external process (e.g. running via xinetd on the server side). That way you don’t have to implement a lot of stuff, and don’t have a chance to make many of the possible bugs. And even with the bugs, you still have the underlying quite-working SSH layer to save your posterior.

1 Like
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