GnuPG.. have you ever wondered 2157

snips

On Wed, 08 Mar 2006 14:07:08 +0000, Mathew P.

Read "Crypto" not too long back. Kinda funny, in a sad sort of way. In essence, the NSA was trying to restrict the use of strong cryptography, at least for export, but effectively ended up (or at least, ended up trying to cause) a fair bit of purely local crippling of crypto in the processes.

Net result - since PK systems and strong crypto and the like were already being distributed - was that the bad guys had it, but "we" didn't, and this somehow made sense to them.

The mind boggles.

Because if they tried to export the strong crypto, they'd be up against munitions charges? :)

Indeed, one wonders why anyone thinks that this sort of thing isn't happening regularly.

Ran across a snippet the other day to the effect someone was criticizing the show CSI - for giving the bad guys too many ideas on how to avoid getting caught.

Sigh.

I think - hell, I know - a lot of people have some very weird notions about ciphers in general. I've talked to many who seem to think that if a cipher can be created today, it can be broken today, by anyone with sufficient computing power.

Now, it's possible that, with quantum computing, that could be the case, though these folks aren't sufficiently technically knowledgeable to know what QC is, let alone how it might apply; they're the "the computer is a mysterious thing that does unknown things for unknown reasons" types, even when they're daily users.

The notion that, barring a significant weakness in a cipher, or a mbuttive revolution in how computing is done - eg quantum - that a strong cipher using a decent key length is going to be broken by anyone just because they can afford a mainframe - or a thousand of them - is simply ridiculous.

-- MS, because work should be measured by effort, rather than result.