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Mathematician warns NSA may be weakening next-gen encryption (www.newscientist.com)
submitted 2 years ago by [M, B] to c/technology@lemmy.world
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Mathematician warns NSA may be weakening next-gen encryption::Quantum computers may soon be able to crack encryption methods in use today, so plans are already under way to replace them with new, secure algorithms. Now it seems the US National Security Agency may be undermining that process

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[–] 26 points 2 years ago (1 child)

...there very much is practically unbreakable encryption. We use those every day (it's part of the s in https).

And your example is just a very rudimentary form of encryption that is far far weaker than the typical encryption methods used on the internet today.

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  • [+] -13 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    It's unbreakable until it isn't.

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  • [–] 13 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I think you vastly underestimate modern encryption. I would recommend looking up concepts and math from encryption, it makes more sense for why thinking that practically unbreakable encryption is very much possible once you do.

    It's why governments want to implement back-doors, because they are not actually capable of breaking it more directly.

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  • [+] -13 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Did you not read the article? It has nothing to do with backdoors.

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  • [–] 16 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    ....it's literally about accusing NSA of trying to implement back-doors for quantum resistant encryption.

    I have no idea what you're trying to get at.

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  • [–] -4 points 2 years ago* (2 children)

    NIST is giving incorrect information. That will not enable back doors. And it is only a matter of time before that doesn't matter. I have no idea why you think there is such a thing as an unbreakable code that is not a one-time use code.

    Edit: ACCUSED of giving incorrect information.

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  • [–] 12 points 2 years ago

    I have no idea why you think there is such a thing as an unbreakable code that is not a one-time use code.

    I have no idea why you think there isn't. Maybe you're going off a strange definition of "unbreakable". When it's used in cryptography, it means "unbreakable in reasonable time limits" (e.g. millions of years).

    The thing about good encryption is that it's not just hard to break, it's mathematically too hard to break even if your available computing power keeps rising exponentially. Unless there is a mistake in the algorithm, it is for all intents and purposes, unbreakable.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago*

    There are theoretical limits to the speed of computation. One limit is the minimum amount of energy it takes to flip a bit. For 256-bit encryption, you have to start saying things like "assume we can convert 100% of the energy from a supernova into a theoretically perfect computer with perfect efficiency". This is a round about way of saying "impossible".

    We've been hammering AES and RSA for decades now, and we haven't been able to get significantly better than brute force against either one. Quantum computers will break RSA (if they can be made with enough qbits, but might be infeasible), but worst case scenario for AES is that we double the key length and we're good again.

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