[Cryptography] NSA versus DES etc....

[Richard Outerbridge]

On 2014-09-24 (267), at 02:09:17, John Denker <jsd at av8n.com> wrote:

[…]

> The entirely foreseeable result of putting out a 
> weakened cipher standard was that friends would use
> the weakened version and enemies would very rapidly
> come up with a non-weakened version.
> 
> If the NSA couldn't foresee this, they were really,
> really dumb.  Assuming they did foresee it, it tells
> you a lot about their priorities.

Y’know, I really don’t believe the NSA have ever been
that dumb.  They’ve been called a lot of fucking things,
just not that dumb.  Maybe dumbed down, but not that dumb.

After all, aren’t they still the smartest geeks in the
world, or have they become underfunded again?
__outer