Is it true that the NSA's crypto department has one massive uber-computer that can decrypt any public encryption software in minutes?
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Is it true that the NSA's crypto department has one massive uber-computer that can decrypt any public encryption software in minutes?
Hehe, I see you read that book too. Do I believe they have more computing power than we can fathom? No doubt. Do I believe they have a single machine with dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of processors, more than anything previously recorded? Probably so. We'll never know, hehe...
Dan Brown does the greatest reasearch ever. Here were the specs that i can remember of the UBER-COMPUTER known as TRNSLTR: 3 million processors. 1.8 BILLION dollars worth of man power and components. Goes down a total of 8 stories into the ground. Pretty impressive i say. They protest any new encryption software to make it look as though they cant break it. Well...if anyone can verify any of this, that'd be great.
Holy Shy7 .... i never heard of that one, i was impressed when i heard about the T6 lines governements use....but this is impressive, im gonna go to google now and research government stuff now....Quote:
TRNSLTR: 3 million processors. 1.8 BILLION dollars worth of man power and components. Goes down a total of 8 stories into the ground.
Dream on, I mean about the verification part. You might as well ask someone to verify the coming of the saviour.
Do I believe that ALL encryption can be broken? No, not really.
Even with immense brute force computing power there are still some encryption methods which would take a few years to break, at least. Sometimes the people bringing these things to light are in actuallity, but unknowingly, working for the people that would like you to think that they have these types of capabilities. (I hope that made sense)
I do believe that NSA has more computing power that anyone else in world.
I do believe that they "peek" a lot of messages around the world, on several medias
But i dont believe that they can break commercial software criptography (the good ones) in minutes or even in days (or few years).
Some criptography schemas can be breaked by brute force, like those using public-private keys - just guessing the 2 prime numbers! but in days? i dont think so
Other are "currently" unbreakable, like one-time password that russians, chinese and a lot of bad use.
But they can read your MS-Exchange encrypt messages....
Hah, can't believe I'm posting in the forum, must be a first. Anyways: Let us ALL remember that the government are people as well. They think similiar to us and have somewhat the same idea as us. All they have more is funding. So before jumping to conclusion's, remember that.
Well duh. It's from a FICTION novel. While Dan Brown does research (he did use two NSA agents apparently for the research on Digital Fortress, which is the book that talks about trnsltr), remember that it is a piece of fiction. NSA has some pretty amazing equipment no doubt and will probably have some of the best out there. But I doubt that the specifics are available online. In addition, the book is dated (1998) so what existed then, may not exist today. I'd guess more towards AI and such in regards to encryption and such.Quote:
Holy Shy7 .... i never heard of that one, i was impressed when i heard about the T6 lines governements use....but this is impressive, im gonna go to google now and research government stuff now....
T6 lines?
Maybe using that rainbow table cracking system I saw in a thread a few days back?It's supposed to speed up cracking by large amounts http://www.antionline.com/showthread...hreadid=257366
As of today, there is no such thing as unbreakable. Difficult and long yes but unbreakable no. The concept of rotating data within the encryption as presented in the novel sounds similar to quantum cryptography. I'd recommend The Code Book by Simon Singh. He has a nice, understandable section on Quantum Crypto (which is hard to accomplish -- the understandability part).Quote:
Other are "currently" unbreakable, like one-time password that russians, chinese and a lot of bad use.
What happened to this:
http://www.antionline.com/showthread...you+crack+this
Looks like I found a new book for the beach.Quote:
Originally posted here by MsMittens
Well duh. It's from a FICTION novel. While Dan Brown does research (he did use two NSA agents apparently for the research on Digital Fortress, which is the book that talks about trnsltr), remember that it is a piece of fiction. NSA has some pretty amazing equipment no doubt and will probably have some of the best out there. But I doubt that the specifics are available online. In addition, the book is dated (1998) so what existed then, may not exist today. I'd guess more towards AI and such in regards to encryption and such.
T6 lines?
Technical books are nice... but semi-technical thrillers are even better.
Yea... T6 lines... you know, when you take two T3 lines and tie them together. :D
AFAIK, it was never cracked. But doesn't mean that it can't be. Keep in mind there is a difference between being unable to crack a code and not having the resources to crack it. The concept suggested in Digital Fortress meant that even Brute Force wouldn't break it -- and THAT is unbreakable. The same would apply to Quantum Crypto because of the multi-state of the data.
That's right, as of today thas very true. Nothing is totally 100% secure and uncrackable/breakable. MsMitten's I'd have to agree with that statement entirely and second it. That's something that newbie's and anyone involved in security should know without doubt.Quote:
As of today, there is no such thing as unbreakable. Difficult and long yes but unbreakable no.
i know this is not a relevant source but it's interesting though:
The higher the number, the more powerful the line is. T1 and T3 are most common. T2 exists, but it's not very common, or obsolete, I suppose.
I hear they go as high as T6 (government lines) but I could be wrong there.
http://www.nhforums.com/forums/showp...10&postcount=6
Ya. And so? I don't understand what's so special about them when there are OC12 lines out there (I nearly went working for a company that had those).Quote:
Yea... T6 lines... you know, when you take two T3 lines and tie them together.
For those unaware:
T-3 = up to 45 Mbps
OC12 = 622 Mbps
just to clarify:
"current" unbreakable = time to break those passwords its too big comparing with the information need.
That means, if i need the information on this month, i will spend 3 months to break to cypher. So, its "unbreakable".
Those one time password, used to encrypt just one message (obvious) its considered "unbreakable" because of this. Timed information...
Sorry... meant it as a joke... a poor one at that.
maybe the joke is on me and there really are t6 lines... I've just never heard about them...
http://www.k-d-r.com/tek/info/comm-line-speeds.html
So, uh, when are we gonna start talking about Eschelon?
*Armed troops crash in through the windows*
Oh no!!! I said it!!!
I thought it was Carnivore? too many freakin' names.
Meh. If the NSA really has a bone to pick with me, they are welcomed to visit. Just as long as they bring the picnic basket 'cuz I ain't feeding 'em.
Ya. And so? OC48 - 2.5 gigabits per seconds and OC192 - 9.6 Gb/S, running today. An OC192 is equivalent to over 6,200 T1's, or over 200 T3's. WAN speed is no longer an issue. If you have the money to pay for it ,then you have the speed to supply it.Quote:
Originally posted here by MsMittens
Ya. And so? I don't understand what's so special about them when there are OC12 lines out there (I nearly went working for a company that had those).
For those unaware:
T-3 = up to 45 Mbps
OC12 = 622 Mbps
Hence, the new saying...."Who needs QoS when you have bandwidth."
Ya. I couldn't remember how far the numbers went. Last time I had checked it was around OC12 as being the highest. That said, if the gov't has a T6, then whoopie. I'd bet the NSA is closer to an OC192 or higher. How else would something like Eschelon/Carnivore work?Quote:
OC48 - 2.5 gigabits per seconds and OC192 - 9.6 Gb/S, running today. An OC192 is equivalent to over 6,200 T1's, or over 200 T3's. WAN speed is no longer an issue. If you have the money to pay for it ,then you have the speed to supply it.
So when's AO gonna get one? ;)
When AO wins one of those Powerball lotteries. Or Bill Gates gives us the Interest on MS' Profits. :D
:)
This may be ever so slightly off topic and the material a bit dated,
but this link is a good read:
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rnc1/descrack/
Order your tickets to Bermuda....
Even at theoretical speeds they'd have to have something far faster than that to feed Carnivore.Quote:
Originally posted here by MsMittens
Ya. I couldn't remember how far the numbers went. Last time I had checked it was around OC12 as being the highest. That said, if the gov't has a T6, then whoopie. I'd bet the NSA is closer to an OC192 or higher. How else would something like Eschelon/Carnivore work?
Has anyone ever mirrored a gig port on a 100Mbs port? *Boom* crash the switch or the port, no doubt. To even view the amount of info runnning everywhere at once they'd better have something bigger than OC192, like, maybe, 10 times that speed....
The issue isn't bandwidth, it's desire. How badly do they want to scan your emails to Grandma? They don't. They don't really care. They want to know info that makes them look bad or will potentially make them look bad. Carnivore is a theory, only. In practice it would make no sense.
Maybe not theory....
You might also want to find the book Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency by James Bamford (he wrote The Puzzle Palace, which is referenced above). Published in 2002 it seems to have some indication that Echelon does in fact exist.Quote:
Source: Globe and Mail
Arrests key win for NSA hackers
By DAVID AKIN
A computer hacker who allowed himself to be publicly identified only as ''Mudhen'' once boasted at a Las Vegas conference that he could disable a Chinese satellite with nothing but his laptop computer and a cellphone.
The others took him at his word, because Mudhen worked at the Puzzle Palace -- the nickname of the U.S. National Security Agency facility at Fort Meade, Md., which houses the world's most powerful and sophisticated electronic eavesdropping and anti-terrorism systems.
It was these systems, plus an army of cryptographers, chaos theorists, mathematicians and computer scientists, that may have pulled in the first piece of evidence that led Canadian authorities to arrest an Ottawa man on terrorism charges last week.
Citing anonymous sources in the British intelligence community, The Sunday Times reported that an e-mail message intercepted by NSA spies precipitated a massive investigation by intelligence officials in several countries that culminated in the arrest of nine men in Britain and one in suburban Orleans, Ont. -- 24-year-old software developer Mohammed Momin Khawaja, who has since been charged with facilitating a terrorist act and being part of a terrorist group.
The Orleans arrest is considered an operational milestone for this vast electronic eavesdropping network and its operators. But Dave Farber, an Internet pioneer and computer-science professor at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, said the circumstances are also notable because it will be the first time that routine U.S. monitoring of e-mail traffic has led to an arrest.
"That's the first admission I've actually seen that they actually monitor Internet traffic. I assumed they did, but no one ever admitted it," Mr. Farber said.
Officials at the NSA could not be reached for comment. But U.S. authorities are uniquely positioned to monitor international Internet and telecommunications traffic because many of the world's international gateways are located in their country. And once that electronic traffic touches an American computer -- an e-mail message, a request for a website or an Internet-based phone call, for instance -- it is routinely monitored by NSA spies.
"Foreign traffic that comes through the U.S. is subject to U.S. laws, and the NSA has a perfect right to monitor all Internet traffic," said Mr. Farber, who has also been a technical adviser to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission.
That's what happened in February, when NSA officers at Fort Meade intercepted a message between correspondents in Britain and Pakistan, The Sunday Times reported. The contents of that message have not been revealed, but are significant enough that dozens of intelligence officials were mobilized in Britain, Canada and the United States.
The intelligence officers at Fort Meade rely on a sophisticated suite of supercomputers and telecommunications equipment to analyze millions of messages and phone calls each day, looking for certain keywords or traffic patterns.
Internet traffic is chopped up into small chunks called packets, and each individual package is then routed over the Internet, to be reassembled at the recipient's end. The packet is wrapped in what computer scientists sometimes refer to as the envelope. And just as the exterior of a regular piece of mail contains important addressing information, so does the envelope of a digitized packet. These bits of information are called headers, and they can be valuable to investigators as well.
Headers typically contain generic descriptions of the packet's contents, in order to let computers make better decisions about how to route the packet through the Internet. E-mail traffic gets a lower priority than Internet video traffic, for instance.
Headers also pick up the numeric or Internet Protocol (IP) address of all the computers a packet touches as it travels from its originating machine all the way to its destination. Every computerized device connected to the Internet has its own unique IP number.
Investigators could program their supercomputers to flag packets of information that met certain criteria, such as a certain IP number, a certain traffic pattern or a certain kind of content. As soon as a packet is flagged, investigators would apply for warrants to assemble the packets and read the messages' contents.
Echelon, for thoes of you that arnt super current on ultra secret government technology, is a supposed computer system that listens to phone conversations and picks out certain words analyses the conversation and then prints it out in a readable form for experts to go throug and do a risk analysis. Not sure if its global or just state side...anyone know? Anyways, were all gonna get tracked down and have our memory erased now. *looks behind* gotta go.
We ride an OC48 pipe. WOOHOO!!!
MsMitts,
Carnivore = FBI http://compnetworking.about.com/libr.../aa120400a.htm
Echelon = NSA http://www.echelonwatch.org/
Happy Reading!
;)
OC, I see.
OC is the optical carrier. It's the limit of how smart mankind is at devising ways to make a laser blink really fast in a multitude of colors to represent data transfer via a Fiber of light. The limitation has been breached and is always being breached even as OC levels such as 12 and forward present themselves in the market place. It's the same fiber but if you replace a card worth millions you can instantly go from OC 12 to say OC 192. Of course a few more million would be spent on equipment to break that down into T3s and then T1s, DS levels etc.
All are very common in telecommunications infrastructure. The weak link in modern encryption is the "person" holding the key and physical access to the circuit cards.
Eschelon is much higher than carnivore Ms. Mittens, at least in the fictional world. The NSA doesn't care much about any of us, not even when you mention key words like Kill the president, destroy the white house. Wrong office. NSA operates in a compartmentalized world, and if anyone hears about it. It's old and already replaced.
thehorse13, Ok. I'm jealous (you guys aren't hiring are you?).
Right. I'll remember that from now on. Carnivore is FBI's baby and Echelon is NSA (that we know of --- we have to remember that NSA is the organization that no one knows exists).
Yeah, Eschelon is indeed global.
Just as an aside, one of the sites listed on Echelon Watch was Epic. And they have a nice (although some seem outdated) list of potential tools to protect yourself (somewhat?) against Echelon and other invasions of privacy: http://www.epic.org/privacy/tools.html
They have "existed" for decades, it was MI5 that was secret, or was that MI6? I forget. Anyway they are recruiting as always.
Ya. But I'm a Canadian. I doubt they'd be hiring me.. ;)
sorry but you spelled it 3 times wrong i believe, it's Echelon....btw: i had a screen name 4 motnhs ago "Echelon Cipher" - had to say it :)Quote:
Yeah, Eschelon is indeed global.
and i believe Echelon spies on IM messages, e-maisl, phone convos etc....i dont think it's active now though, who knows what kind of programs the government has now up and running....btw: the www.aimencrypt.com certificate, how can they desipher it when every message sent no matter how long or short is looks like this
Friend SN (11:35:13 PM): 0€ **H*÷_€0€1°0__
LSysAdmn (11:35:36 PM): 0€ **H*÷ €0€1°0_
doesnt there have to be a certain sign or code be assigned to every letter and number for it to be able to be encrypted ?
Heh heh, and here I was thinking everyone else was spelling it wrong. ;)
Didn't France try to sue us over the Esch...Ech...spy thingie?
I would ASSUME it was MI6, as it was the external agency, the double agents that traveled to Russia and such belonged to it, it's the equal of the U.S.'s CIA, MI5 was the internal agency, sort of like the FBI, responsible for picking out double agents in MI6 and dealing the the IRA and PIRA.Quote:
They have "existed" for decades, it was MI5 that was secret, or was that MI6? I forget. Anyway they are recruiting as always.
:eek:Quote:
You're holding that job for me still right???????
Second:
Why has no one even said a thing about OC-256 lines? Over 13 GBs a second. I learned about them a few semesters ago.
And what speed does a T-6 Have? I doubt it would be two T3s, because 3 T-1s are far from even One T3. If I am calculating correctly, which I'm probably not, a T-6 should be close to 500 or so MBs a second. Maybe more?
Not unless they have made a breakthrough in factoring.Quote:
Originally posted here by Minu
Is it true that the NSA's crypto department has one massive uber-computer that can decrypt any public encryption software in minutes?