Secure Communications | 68 comments (68 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: Secure Communications (none / 1)

Haha funniest thread ever.

If you want to send a message "demonstration starts now," then just send it. Anything that has incriminating evidence is doomed to eventual decoding, no matter how clever your system is. Anything else. WW2 messages were still being decoded and evaluated in 1980.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venona_project

by asdf on Mon Aug 19th, 2013 at 10:47:50 PM EST

Re: Secure Communications (4.00 / 3)

Sure, maybe - good luck decoding a one-time pad you don't have the key for - but that probably doesn't matter. Forty years later the operation succeeded or failed.

by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Tue Aug 20th, 2013 at 05:49:44 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Secure Communications (none / 1)

Your faith in the slowness of computers, and the good intentions of certain agencies, and the randomness of algorithmic random number generators, and the lack of agents in one's organization, and the ability of any human-membered team to avoid encryption mistakes is entertaining.

by asdf on Tue Aug 20th, 2013 at 10:11:02 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Secure Communications (none / 0)

Again. only people with an inexplicable fear of soldering wire would ever use a pseudorandom generator when nature has given us granite and science has given us geigercounters. Or any of a dozen very easily put together true random number generators. This is not difficult, nor expensive. It is trivial.

by Thomas on Tue Aug 20th, 2013 at 10:23:45 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Secure Communications (none / 1)

Assuming you're not in NYC, where Peter Vallone tried to ban geiger counters, along with all other devices to measure pollution. I don't think they suceeded, but they may try again.

by gk (gk (gk quattro due due sette @gmail.com)) on Tue Aug 20th, 2013 at 10:33:00 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Secure Communications (none / 1)

Computer speed isn't really an issue with one-time pads. The output is effectively random, if I recall properly (checks, yes I do), so there simply isn't the information there to break the code without the key, even in theory. You're not relying of the difficulty of computing anything.

At no point did I discuss the use of algorithmic random number generators: I may have neglected to specify, but's thats only because of the well-known idiocy of using one in connection with encryption.

I'm only discussing securing electronic communications: the rest of the trade craft is left as an exercise for the reader.

Given a one-time pad, using it to encrypt a message isn't the most difficult thing imaginable. It's the sort of thing you should be able to build to a very high level of assurance in a relatively short time. Be careful about what you write onto your transfer medium and you're pretty safe.

by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Tue Aug 20th, 2013 at 10:33:25 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Secure Communications (none / 0)

Long reply replaced by "fallible humans."

by asdf on Tue Aug 20th, 2013 at 11:43:02 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Secure Communications (none / 0)

Sure. The risk of exposure rises exponentially (or thereabouts?) in the number of people involved.

by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Tue Aug 20th, 2013 at 12:07:00 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Secure Communications (none / 0)

But that's sort of the point: if you want secure communications you have to go those sort of lengths and they're bloody impractical for anything other than point-to-point within a very small group of people or a very professional organisation.

Otherwise assume the NSA and friends are listening to everything.

by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Tue Aug 20th, 2013 at 12:14:46 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Secure Communications (none / 0)

Right, and with the smallest number of participants, two, you have to hope and pray that the other guy is not going to turn you in.

by asdf on Tue Aug 20th, 2013 at 12:18:45 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Secure Communications (4.00 / 4)

That's not the take-away at all.

They were able to crack certain messages because one-time pads were re-used by the Soviets (to improve productivity figures presumably!) That's an easy blunder to avoid.

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue
- Queen Elizabeth II}

by eurogreen on Tue Aug 20th, 2013 at 05:53:10 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Secure Communications (none / 1)

The hint is in the name ...

by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Tue Aug 20th, 2013 at 05:55:03 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Secure Communications (none / 1)

Plenty of blunders are easy to avoid, but for some reason they just keep on happening over and over and over. Why is that???

by asdf on Tue Aug 20th, 2013 at 10:12:15 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Secure Communications (none / 0)

Is this case, I'm going to guess it's the difficulty of transmitting OTPs.

by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Tue Aug 20th, 2013 at 10:34:17 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Secure Communications (none / 1)

The short answer is the average person is a nincompoop.

The super-duper Enigma 2 was cracked after an operator sent the exact same long message twice and in succession using the exact same key and the exact same rotor set-up.

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre

by ATinNM on Tue Aug 20th, 2013 at 10:59:34 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Institutional Supidity (none / 1)

Besides Many-Time Pads the Soviets continued to use microdots even after they knew they had been compromised. They also used Enigma to encrypt some of their communications, in some cases the actual machines captured from the Wehrmacht.

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre

by ATinNM on Tue Aug 20th, 2013 at 11:06:11 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Institutional Supidity (none / 1)

I don't think they knew that Enigma had been cracked: the British kept it a secret for many years after the war.

by gk (gk (gk quattro due due sette @gmail.com)) on Tue Aug 20th, 2013 at 11:09:17 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Institutional Supidity (none / 1)

Maybe, but remember that there is a huge practical problem with all of these systems. You have to get your Enigma machines and processes and papers and trained officers and technicians and informed generals and couriers and radio listeners and everything else all set up, and then if you find out that there is a security failure, there's a massive institutional inertia not wanting to change anything that you're going to have to overcome.

So the British listened to the Germans, the Germans listened to the Russians, the Russians listened to the Americans, the Americans listened to the Japanese, and the Japanese listened to the Native Americans. I think the super-duper-ness of the Enigma system is mostly propaganda. For a couple of years early in the war it was a pretty stupendous effort, and then the weirdo English mathematicians and chess players were replaced by massive brute force computers over in the U.S.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/brewbooks/3318667711/in/photostream/

by asdf on Tue Aug 20th, 2013 at 11:56:14 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Institutional Supidity (none / 1)

Partly that, partly I remember reading the British and Americans sold on these German uncrackable encryption machines to friends and allies after the war, so they would keep the advantage. And even after the Russians found out about it from the Cambridge spies after the war, they weren't going to grass them up, because then they could read those allied transmissions too.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Tue Aug 20th, 2013 at 04:24:53 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Secure Communications | 68 comments (68 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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