Gmail: Public service announcement

[cj001f]

Originally posted by Cornholio
Plus, I would be more than a little surprised if NSA had, in fact, cracked PGP (or it's ilk). It's very, very strong.

Cough, cough, as is there computing power and brain power.

[Cornholio]

Originally posted by cj001f
Cough, cough, as is thEIr computing power and brain power.

The brain power at NSA isn't any stronger than anywhere else in the world, guaranteed. They tried to hire me, if that tells you anything.

As for computing, if they have a quantum computer (which, most agree, seems incredibly unlikely) they'll be able to crack individual RSA-ish messages by brute force, but an actual fast algorithm to factor the numbers involved *probably* doesn't exist.

This is all speculation/bullshit, but that's why the NSA has the power it does. Their capabilites are totally unknown.

Doesn't change the fact that PGP/RSA is still amazingly strong, and will hide your little diary entries from nearly everyone.

[lemon boy]

The Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. Great book

[Cornholio]

YES!! Great read. Thanks LB.

[Yossarian]

yes, that's the one.

I recommended The Code Book to you, and then you ended up breaking more of the codes than I did, believe. I got stuck at number 7 of 10 or so. I think you were able to complete #7. I forget.

Anyway, the basics of RSA/PGP are spelled out in the appendix, and for those of you with any background in combinatorial math, are pretty easy to understand.

Cracking isn't an issue of smarts, as Corn mentioned. It's an issue of time in the universe.

The cypher, like almost all strong cryptos of today, is based on functional transformations that are irreversible. That is, you take a number or set of numbers, and then do something to them which has the property of not being able to be traced backwards. In other words, the result of the transformation provides no way know where the starting point was.

Sounds impossible, but it's really not that hard to come up with functions with this property.

Arithmetic on the clock is one such transformation. If I tell you that I came up with 5pm, and started with Time T, and then added Hours H to get to 5pm, can you tell me what T and H are?

Of course not, there's a uncountably large number of possibilities because clock math (modular math at p=12) is a many to one relationship.

Now imagine that you take that principle and start using very large prime numbers as your starting point, which have their own interesting properties such as being hard to find, and you're getting the picture.

You'd pretty much need quantum computing to get anywhere, but there are lots of ways to skin a cat (particularly when it can exist and not exist at the same time), so who knows.

Anyway, The Code Book is a great read, not too techie, great history in there too, way back to ancient history.

Cryptonomicon is a favorite book as well, clever as shit.

Two thumbs up!

[bad_roo]

This could well explain the glazed look on the Rev's face in that minivan in Argentina last summer.

[Yossarian]

nah, that was from the Argentinian chick giving him road head

[altachic]

Originally posted by Yossarian
nah, that was from the Argentinian chick giving him road head

YES!

[lemon boy]

NERD ALERT! NERD ALERT

Originally posted by Yossarian
yes, that's the one.

I recommended The Code Book to you, and then you ended up breaking more of the codes than I did, believe. I got stuck at number 7 of 10 or so. I think you were able to complete #7. I forget.

Anyway, the basics of RSA/PGP are spelled out in the appendix, and for those of you with any background in combinatorial math, are pretty easy to understand.

Cracking isn't an issue of smarts, as Corn mentioned. It's an issue of time in the universe.

The cypher, like almost all strong cryptos of today, is based on functional transformations that are irreversible. That is, you take a number or set of numbers, and then do something to them which has the property of not being able to be traced backwards. In other words, the result of the transformation provides no way know where the starting point was.

Sounds impossible, but it's really not that hard to come up with functions with this property.

Arithmetic on the clock is one such transformation. If I tell you that I came up with 5pm, and started with Time T, and then added Hours H to get to 5pm, can you tell me what T and H are?

Of course not, there's a uncountably large number of possibilities because clock math (modular math at p=12) is a many to one relationship.

Now imagine that you take that principle and start using very large prime numbers as your starting point, which have their own interesting properties such as being hard to find, and you're getting the picture.

You'd pretty much need quantum computing to get anywhere, but there are lots of ways to skin a cat (particularly when it can exist and not exist at the same time), so who knows.

Anyway, The Code Book is a great read, not too techie, great history in there too, way back to ancient history.

Cryptonomicon is a favorite book as well, clever as shit.

Two thumbs up!

[The Reverend Floater]

What have we become?

[Yossarian]

oh shut your cake hole and start packing for this trip to Argentina

[Ski Monkey]

Originally posted by lemon boy
and you could still incript transmissions via gmail.

For those who are REALLY WORRIED ABOUT THIS STUFF:

http://www.gnupg.org/

Use some crypto that is STRONG.

I use gnupg and it works great. Opensource, active development and it's free.