Re:Amateur sleuths crack one of the Zodiac Killer's ciphers ...
by blindm on Saturday December 12, 2020 @08:42AM
(#25398172)
This is what will happen to all the encrypted Internet traffic in another 50 years. NSA is collecting encrypted comms so that they can crack it at a later date using quantum computers.
Re:Amateur sleuths crack one of the Zodiac Killer's ciphers ...
by BelenusMordred on Saturday December 12, 2020 @09:58AM
(#25398590)
Care to note how much traffic transverses the internet each day and then how much harddrive capacity is produced globally? Bit of a mismatch there but I don't doubt some salty Americans to get upset about me pointing out the plain truth. Spoiler: You are far from omnipotent. Sorry guys.
Hopefully your women and men in the hotseat can focus on what is important and narrow down what to save and what to trash. I'm sure they have that in the bag being the best, the brightest and best compensated software engineers in the country.
Ignoring that, asymmetrical handshakes for the underlying symmetrical keys, yeah sure, completely at risk from a quantum computer that can actually perform, that's a massive threat for anyone wanting to keep their credit card number and dick pics safe.
Anything symmetrical in nature is likely fine for a very long time and will not be touched by <QUANTUM SUPREMACY>. As dangerous as it is to bet against the future, the engineering challenges involved with quantum computing are looking very much like fusion energy, it's a great if they can do it, but fair chance they won't get there long after we are all dead.
A neverending stream of scary soundbytes that leads to perpetual funding for groups of people who are proven to be failures is very much guaranteed though :)
Re:Amateur sleuths crack one of the Zodiac Killer's ciphers ...
by lr4444lr on Saturday December 12, 2020 @10:01AM
(#25398597)
Given how easily earlier messages were cracked, there was significant reason to believe that Zodiac did not actually encrypt his message properly. He was a delusional psychopath, and even the current effort, if you look at the details, had to deal with misspellings and out of order values that may not have even been deliberate. The team admits that it got very lucky.
Re:Amateur sleuths crack one of the Zodiac Killer's ciphers ...
by lemonspat on Saturday December 12, 2020 @10:19AM
(#25398723)
This is great work! Every few years I would come back to reading about these ciphers, hoping that I could find a way to crack them. I realize this did not direclty give them clues, but I'm hopeful to see any new connections that might come of these (some other analysis)
Re:Amateur sleuths crack one of the Zodiac Killer's ciphers ...
by 1cvmask on Saturday December 12, 2020 @10:07AM
(#25398636)
We can finally put to rest (pun not intended) the Ted Cruz Zodiac Killer meme. Although Google had already buried (pun intended) the autosuggest “Is Ted Cruz the Zodiac Killer?”.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25390941 (129 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25387216 (8 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25391319 (3 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25389209 (3 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25389164 (2 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25397833
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25397787
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25397630
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25396056
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25393783
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25392966
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25392695
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25391797
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25391450
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25391065
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25390960
There will probably be others that I've missed.
Hopefully your women and men in the hotseat can focus on what is important and narrow down what to save and what to trash. I'm sure they have that in the bag being the best, the brightest and best compensated software engineers in the country.
Ignoring that, asymmetrical handshakes for the underlying symmetrical keys, yeah sure, completely at risk from a quantum computer that can actually perform, that's a massive threat for anyone wanting to keep their credit card number and dick pics safe.
Anything symmetrical in nature is likely fine for a very long time and will not be touched by <QUANTUM SUPREMACY>. As dangerous as it is to bet against the future, the engineering challenges involved with quantum computing are looking very much like fusion energy, it's a great if they can do it, but fair chance they won't get there long after we are all dead.
A neverending stream of scary soundbytes that leads to perpetual funding for groups of people who are proven to be failures is very much guaranteed though :)
Actual tests of Watson, like in medicine, have been a huge failure. It's nowhere close to being generally intelligent.
fwiw
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Cruz–Zodiac_Killer_meme