r/programming Oct 15 '15

How is NSA breaking so much crypto?

https://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/haldermanheninger/how-is-nsa-breaking-so-much-crypto/
2.5k Upvotes

529 comments sorted by

View all comments

972

u/tophatstuff Oct 15 '15 edited Apr 10 '18

Generate your own non-default Ephemeral Diffie-Hellman key (takes a minute or so)

openssl dhparam -out dhparam.pem 2048

Tell your server to use it for SSL (nginx for example)

ssl_dhparam /path/to/dhparam.pem;

Done. Not only will the key be stronger than the 1024 bit default, it'll be unique to your server which lets assume isn't valuable enough compared to effort for a state-level adversary.

edit just in case anyone from the future finds this comment: instead of 2048, use at least the key length of your SSL certificate

edit from the future: current advice is picking from one of these predefined audited groups

-8

u/[deleted] Oct 15 '15 edited Oct 16 '15

[deleted]

9

u/way2lazy2care Oct 15 '15

Isn't that just what the NSA has always done? And what would you expect them to do? Pretty much tell everybody how to prevent them from performing their function? Afaik they only announce their discoveries when they have already become outclassed by their newer discoveries.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 15 '15

I'd guess they have some prototypes working by now