[Cryptography] NSA Crypto Breakthrough Bamford [was: WhatsApp keying...]

[Henry Baker]

At 03:36 AM 5/18/2016, grarpamp wrote:
>If you actually read and reassemble all the references in the article (which I won't do herein), they all refer to a 'cryptanalytic' breakthrough over modern crypto, further assisted with compute power, and deployed.
>
>"...the ability to crack current public encryption."

I tend to agree with Nadia Heninger's conjecture that NSA has broken discrete logs of certain types.

It has the right flavor: NOBUS acres of computers.

"Logjam" attack on discrete logs:

https://weakdh.org/imperfect-forward-secrecy.pdf

Note that achieving this discrete log breakthrough doesn't rule out other approaches: elliptic curve backdoors, more-than-modest improvements in integer factoring with non-quantum computers, back doors in Intel/AMD/Broadcom/TI/Qualcomm crypto hardware, etc.

I think that the most recent complaints about Chinese interest in examining "proprietary" HW/SW of American manufacture might shake out some of these back doors (which I estimate to exist with nearly 100% probability).

The reason why these HW/SW back doors almost certainly exist: NSA's lime-in-the-cleats arrogance -- together with rubber-stamp NSL's from a round-heeled FISA non-court -- means that the NSA spooks simply can't stop themselves.  When you're addicted to the power to force American companies to "Click It or Ticket" (perhaps you have to live in California to understand this imperative to buckle under) like the NSA, your addiction makes you powerless to resist without outside intervention.

Yes, when these back doors are eventually revealed by some post-Snowden patriot, they will destroy the rest of any credibility that remains in American chip and computer vendors, resulting in multi billions of $$$$ in losses (including job losses).  I suspect that this is why Hayden has said that the health of the U.S. IT industry is more important than weakening encryption; he wants to "get ahead of the story" when these back doors are finally revealed.  Notice that Hayden only changed his tune *after* Snowden, and Hayden now understands that more Snowdens are not only possible, but likely.

It is possible that the US may let the Chinese in on these back door secrets in order to preserve its ability to keep using them against everyone else, but this fall-back strategy can't possibly be a long-term stable solution.  (There is an historical precedent for this strategy: the U.S./Swiss continued to sell broken Enigma-style crypto equipment to the non-first-world nations in the 1950's.)

The US will enable the Chinese to use these backdoors to suppress internal dissent for two reasons: the US thinks that a "stable" China -- even with massive human rights violations -- is vastly preferable to a chaotic democratic China (or a multiplicity of Chinas); and the US finds these back doors exceedingly useful for its own purposes both inside & outside the US.