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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > If average people have cracked government codes
 
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Hyperlynx
Sep 13, 2015

 Governments can't even crack off-the-shelf cryptography in any reasonable timescales. That's why they're getting so pissy about the public having access to end-to-end encryption via things like Whatsapp.

So if well-funded government intelligence departments can't crack publicly available technology, it's a reasonable assumption that the general public can't crack them either. Though security researchers do their best to try.

* # ¿ Jul 24, 2016 13:23
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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 08:04
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Hyperlynx
Sep 13, 2015

thrakkorzog posted:

Most of the old codes were designed by people who were sponsored by rulers, and kept their codes secret in case their secrets fell into enemy hands.

These days most modern day cryptologists tend to open source their ideas, and ask for any obvious loopholes.

It's possible that the NSA has cracked a few codes without publishing everything. But that doesn't mean they've cracked everything, and they would like to keep that mix secret.

Yes, that's part of it. The modern approach to cryptography is that it must be secure even if the attacker knows every detail of how the encryption works - the only secret is the encryption key. If knowing how the cypher works is enough to break it then it's a poo poo cypher.

* # ¿ Jul 28, 2016 12:33
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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > If average people have cracked government codes