Re:Tim Berners-Lee: Spies' cracking of encryption undermines...
by logfromblammo on Tuesday December 03, 2013 @11:48AM
(#6841405)
There is no free lunch. Securing your communications against every possible attack has a cost. If the cost is so high that even the intended recipient cannot pay it, that may be as bad or worse than transmitting in the clear.
It will always be an arms race between defenders and attackers, because the cost of everything changes over time. You will always have to worry about some genius getting struck by a satori that makes your entire encryption scheme worthless.
The problem is akin to someone in the shipbuilding business worrying about the discovery of a beam that can reduce the strength of a 1-cm thick steel plate to 1-cm thick toilet paper--and the effect is not attenuated by normal matter. The inventor could build a facility in the hinterlands that could instantly and tracelessly sink any steel ship, anywhere in the world.
That is what encryption designers are up against. TBL is upset because intel agencies have been quietly quashing non-vulnerable schemes and/or actively promoting vulnerable ones, paying no heed to the possibility that their enemies might also have some geniuses, or that their own geniuses' ideas might replicate and leak outside of their info-fortress.
It will always be an arms race between defenders and attackers, because the cost of everything changes over time. You will always have to worry about some genius getting struck by a satori that makes your entire encryption scheme worthless.
The problem is akin to someone in the shipbuilding business worrying about the discovery of a beam that can reduce the strength of a 1-cm thick steel plate to 1-cm thick toilet paper--and the effect is not attenuated by normal matter. The inventor could build a facility in the hinterlands that could instantly and tracelessly sink any steel ship, anywhere in the world.
That is what encryption designers are up against. TBL is upset because intel agencies have been quietly quashing non-vulnerable schemes and/or actively promoting vulnerable ones, paying no heed to the possibility that their enemies might also have some geniuses, or that their own geniuses' ideas might replicate and leak outside of their info-fortress.