Minister promises that Part III is coming

[David Biggins]

=20

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ukcrypto-admin@chiark.greenend.org.uk=20
> [mailto:ukcrypto-admin@chiark.greenend.org.uk] On Behalf Of=20
> Ian G Batten
> Sent: 15 May 2006 12:57
> To: ukcrypto@chiark.greenend.org.uk
> Subject: Re: Minister promises that Part III is coming
>=20
>=20
> On 15 May 2006, at 12:48, Owen Lewis wrote:
> >  Because the exploitations that caused the said child=20
> molester to be=20
> > banged up may be the same or similar to those applied against some=20
> > terrorist group or even against some nuclear- armed and failed or=20
> > rogue state.
>=20
> I've always taken comfort from that.  There's always a=20
> know-it-all who says, unanswerably, ``of course, GCHQ can=20
> brute force 3DES|AES256| OTP in a day''.=20

The answer to that, of course is - "OK - so how many per day can they do
that to, and why should MY message be in the top-priority x out of the
number they are likely to wish to brute-force, rather than say someone
likely to be suspected of links to ObL?"

> My logic has been=20
> that even if we accept for a moment that they can --- which I=20
> don't --- they're hardly going to =20
> reveal their hand for anything I'm likely to be involved in.   So =20
> even if it turned out that AES256 had a flaw that rendered it=20
> tractable, the purposes to which that's going to be put don't=20
> include decrypting my ssh sessions.

Well, not provided they haven't got some specific and compelling purpose
in targeting you, personally, or your server, specifically.

Tinfoil hat apart, the ability of "them" to break any particular crypto
in any timeframe longer than seconds, or more likely milliseconds, means
that it has to remain a solution directly targeted by other intelligence
or objectives.

Dave.