Factoring may be easier than we think

Re:Factoring may be easier than we think by nickpsecurity on Wednesday August 24, 2016 @07:16PM (#12355952)

Fortunately, those slides leaked. The lower levels talked about cryptanalysis and supercomputers. The TS/SCI/ECI stuff said they were backdooring crypto at the company level using FBI locally and CIA/ISA foreign. Also note their own Type 1 systems allow these ciphers with most sensitive stuff and EKMS using a variation of Photorus called Firefly. Safe bet that good implementations of the stuff still work.

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Re:Factoring may be easier than we think by feral on Wednesday August 24, 2016 @07:50PM (#12356080)

That's a lot of detail, which I'm not familiar with as a causal observer, but its irrelevant.

The slides show the capabilities of one layer of the onion, but its surely naive to assume that's everything?

A total mathematical factoring break is a holy grail. I mean, they made a hollywood movie about this! In the 90s!

Sneakers: "There isn't a government on this planet that wouldn't kill us all for that thing." Obviously, that's a movie, not real life, but the sentiment is valid.

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Re:Factoring may be easier than we think by nickpsecurity on Wednesday August 24, 2016 @08:17PM (#12356156)

It's possible. Yet, someone has to be able to use that stuff. The Sentry Eagle leaks showed that, as I predicted, they developed most of this stuff in Special Access Programs that compartmentalize things away from even TS clearance. Then, as capabilities are developed, people with TS/SCI clearances are briefed on one or more based on their need to know. Some are so high up they get briefed on all of them. That was Sentry Eagle:

https://leaksource.info/2014/10/17/sentry-eagle-nsa-core-sec...

As you can see, the descriptions represent their most guarded secrets that can do the gravest damage. There could be an extra layer that basically has that one fact in it. I doubt it given how many different angles of attack & severity these docs cover. We also saw that predicted damage adding up after the releases of such leaks. It's more believable given it's the exact kinds of things I'd expect a post-9/11 agency to be doing if they couldn't break RSA, etc. They'd do it anyway for deniability but these are so secret they'd rather let targets go to preserve them. The secrecy level was already tight enough to cover preserving RSA so long as insiders on highest levels kept quiet.

Last part they didn't play so well. ;)

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