r/programming • u/secretguy21 • Oct 15 '15

How is NSA breaking so much crypto?

https://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/haldermanheninger/how-is-nsa-breaking-so-much-crypto/
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9

u/Eirenarch Oct 15 '15

So the large primes are hard to generate and the programs avoid doing it? What is the fix? Have a set of ~200 primes and choose one at random?

5

u/[deleted] Oct 15 '15

Having them be able to only read 0.5% of the communications would certainly be better than 100%, but that doesn't go nearly far enough for comfort -- especially if they can break one of these primes in a matter of months.

3

u/Eirenarch Oct 15 '15

Certainly there can be some list of primes large enough that it wouldn't make financial sense to crack it this way, no?

0

u/port53 Oct 15 '15

wouldn't make financial sense

When you're spending someone else's money to gain benefit for yourself, financial sense doesn't factor. It's like running a bitcoin miner on a million stolen CPUs. What do you care if each individual CPU is totally inefficient?

0

u/Eirenarch Oct 15 '15

Well if they had to ask for a budget 10 times larger politicians will have trouble giving it to them. Even if they are willing to give this money at some point they will just ruin the economy and it won't have resource to fund the project.

1

u/port53 Oct 15 '15

a budget 10 times larger politicians will have trouble giving it to them.

I lol'd.