can the government crack encryption?

then who do you wanna keep away?

Originally posted by slick
I was just wondering what your thoughts were on whether or not the government can actually crack the various encryption programs that are out there today.

I am less afriad that the government actually has the processing power needed to crack consumer crypto than i am afraid that most "name brand" consumer grade crypto packages provide the government with a skeleton key of sorts.

its a lot easier for everyone that way i guess, and as a result i refuse to use any crypto software that i am not given total access to source code for my own review.

I don't think the activity is called Echelon any more, but they can definitely break anything you put in front of them. They have state of the art technology decades ahead of anything we have seen yet.

They had biometric scanners in the 70's. Stuff we consider cutting edge is ancient news to these people. So if anything can be broken with brute force, encrypted items might as well be post cards.

The biggest lie is that encryption can hide anything.



[edit on 30-3-2005 by xman_in_blackx]

Originally posted by crispexi
Yeah i believe the NSA is about 200 years ahead of the current world mathematically. So they can basically crack anything they need to.

that's what they wanted you to believe...and you bought it.
if they really were 200 years ahead,they wouldn't be wining for backdoors in encryption software,they wouldn't be opposing any form of private crypto and they would be able to crack the messages sent by terrorists....


[edit on 31-3-2005 by magnetar]

Originally posted by ShadowXIX
I wouldnt be surprised if there were backdoors built into some of the more popular Encryption program for the NSA or who ever to exploit.

That's why i'm planning on writing my own encryption program based on fractal patterns...totally random stuff. i'll distrubute it free to anyone, just to spite big bro...i just gotta get off my lazy ass and bring my idea to fruitation

I actually have design advanced encryption codes in my spare time.Each time i design one is become more complex and harder to solve.I rate my skill levels in dregrees of difficultly.I started at level 8 and progressed to level 12.I reach level 14 and now can reach level 22 and beyond.Its really a brain strain trying to put them togeather.I make one mistake and the whole code is stuffed.I will not post them on the net because it really illegal to advertise enycription codes.I beleive my encryption codes are so advanced no one,not even the us goverment can break the codes.Last year i give up designing them because the difficultly was just getting too much to handel.Now days i just like playing the computer space game on my computer.I designed the game myself.That game is very advanced too and only very intelligent people would be able to play it.I think the last game i played took seven hours to play and that was only five rounds.Some games go for eight rounds.

I dont assume to really understand a great deal of what you are all talking about as far as different types of encryption and all the terminology but I can tell you this......


Working within law enforcement we encounter computers that have their files protected by various means of encryption. Machines seized as part of high level investigations with such encryption are shipped out to a State Agency and they come back within 2 weeks with every single file open and available to be accessed.

I have NO idea how they do it or how complex the encryption is but if a small department like mine has access to a State Agency that can do that just imagine what the Federal Agencies are capable of.



edit for spelling error

[edit on 17-7-2009 by SwatMedic]

Having been involved with working on GPU CUDA applications with nvidia I can tell you that cracking pretty much any encryption is very possible given the computing power. We were cracking MD5 hashes on my gaming machine and resolving 40 character passwords in anywhere between 10 seconds and a minute. Thats just 2 video cards in SLI cracking 40 character passwords. Now imagine you had an entire server farm of the fastest.

Of course they can...They can do anything at their will.
In my opinion, yes, they can crack any encryption alogrythms out there.
It may be hard work, but it can be done.

As a matter of fact, the government has there own encryption methods but the public does not even know it or know what type it is.

What is sad is (and I have studied and written many university anthropology essays on the subject in Native Studies) is that the native languages (of the Navajo and others) were 'cracked' on the pretence of their importance and need to aid in war efforts. Previous, governments (US and Canada) had tried to stifle the native languages of these peoples in order to destroy their culture and ancestral/family ties. In gathering a varied supply of these language-owners the government was ensured it could get accurate (and voluntary) details on how the language is spoken (meant) and the linguistics therefore transcribed into a meaningful cross-reference into English.

Since their language was passed through generations through ancient myths and (cosmic and personal) legends, I hope not all language secrets were revealed during these periods of war (Korean War and beyond).

Sometimes a culture gives details innocently through access to be used by these means that they wouldn't otherwise divulge through force or even in an objective-driven scholarly study.

Regrettable in any case, it is likely no word, phrase or figurative picture has been kept for tribe-only usage. To have held on to these would have been empowerment to thrive as a distinct nation/people all of their own.



[edit on 21-7-2009 by suzque66]

reply to post by Elfwood


Essentially yes, which is what created the so called double and triple DES interim solutions. Double DES as stated in the post refers to the use of two DES encryption, with two different keys, effectively doubling the DES key from 56 to 112 bits. This more than doubles the strength of the cipher.

Each addition of a single bit doubles the amount of keys. So a 57-bit key is twice as long as a 56-bit key. A 58-bit key is four times as big as a 56-bit key, and so on. However, there is an approach used originally by Diffle and Hellman called "meet in the middle" which reduces the number of Double DES keys to about double the number in DES.

So yeah Double DES is better than single DES, but Triple DES is now considered the minimum strength DES to be used if DES is the encryption that is to be used.

Triple DES you use three DES encryptions, with three separate DES keys. But having three keys is a bit difficult, so a guy at IBM made a triple DES using two keys approach. (His name is Walter Truchman)


As for the DES encryption itself, here is a bit of history.

RSA data sec inc. did its first DES crack wargame in 1997. The first time it was cracked it took a team 96 days to do it. Within a year a team from distributed.net cracked DES in 41 days. In 1998 Distributed and EFF cracked it in 56 hours. Six months later they did it again in less than 24 hours.

Even though double and triple DES is considered much more difficult and secure, DES for all intensive purposes is considered to be dead and should not be used for high security material.

If the government wants to crack a encryption and can get a tap close enough to one of the computers used to encrypt or decrypt a code the can read the keystrokes from the minute bleed of RF energy.

Then once they have the key they can read the code.

All computers bleed RF energy. even keyboards bleed RF.
put a sensitive receiver on the phone line/cable/wifi/or close enough to the computer and you can receive this RF bleed.

When they try to open a encryption with there key you can read there key and use it to open the encryption.

By all means, they can trace you even with or without encryption.
The NSA by Law, has to trace every computer and or even cellphones to a centralized database...

So I dont think any encryption would block there use of monitoring...And whats the point???

reply to post by darpa999


I believe they cannot solve all encryptions

reply to post by crispexi


Lets see them solve my 8,000 bit encryption.

Better than breaking encryption, they have devices that read "digital emanations" - that emit from all electronic devices, and all information exists kinda like an aura of the human bio-energy field, and it can be read without going into the actual files.

Unless they have a backdoor already in the commercial package my opinion is there is no way they can crack a proper strong encryption if they could they wouldn't be passing laws that demand you have to hand over your keys.

Digital Fortress was an entertaining read but like all Dan Browns books based on pure fantasy.

That's not to say they can't just bug the computer itself and get the information that way though.

Yes the goverment can solve most encryption codes.A day will come when the goverment finds a encryption code they and there advanced computers cannot solve.They will want to know the person who created it.If someone had the intellegence to out smart the goverment and there computers with a advanced encryption code they had better put there running shoes on because the goverment will be on your trail to employ you.I guess the goverment could find a position for a very intellegent person like this in there encryption section.

[edit on 1-9-2009 by GORGANTHIUM]

I use TrueCrypt with 2x 64Kb keyfiles and a 44 character(low/uppercase+symbols+digits)

Encryption in worst to best order: Serpent-Twofish-AES

So they can crack this within?

[edit on 25/9/2009 by digalog]

Originally posted by xman_in_blackx
I don't think the activity is called Echelon any more, but they can definitely break anything you put in front of them. They have state of the art technology decades ahead of anything we have seen yet.

How do you know that they (presume the "government") has technology decades ahead. You can speculate this to be the case, but in reality there is no evidence that they are in the position you suggest they are in.

I would hazard that they (the government) is not as far ahead as you want to believe. In some areas - like computing power - the military probably trails academia and industry, unless you have evidence to the contrary.

Regards