Is it true that TPTB can bypass any encryption software???

originally posted by: paraphi
To have back doors into encryption suggests that security all companies are in league with governments. The fact that various governments are calling for "back doors" indicates that these do not exist at the minute. However, the UK has ruled this option out.

People and companies need decent encryption to guard against criminal and government backed hacking e.g. from China. The latter country has been merrily plundering commercial secrets for he last decade.

Very good post, I would like to add that for some applications it is a legal requirement to have a certain level of encryption. Ever since project PRISM was exposed by Snowden the big players are even encrypting traffic accross leased lines and circuits regardless if they are physical or virtual. In the recent past they did not and anyone working at their service provider could intercept traffic as it was human readable.

For anyone that wants to encrypt for example a file that would have passwords in it, I would recommend AxCrypt. Very nice product.

AxCrypt Site

Another thing to consider, which I believe no one will ever be able to break, is bulk encryption. There are several methods, I will give a few examples.

-You VPN (which is encrypted) to work, and your RDP connection to your PC is also encrypted.
-A mutiplexed circuit that is hardware encrypted, the aggregated traffic also has point to point hardware encryption, this is very strong. Think of it as a bunch of point to point connections that all use the same wire for transmission.
-Your harddrive is using bitlocker encrypton, plus you encrypt a file using software and save it on the encrypted disk.

How does introducing a quantum computer affect the time needed to brute force keys?

a reply to: masscreation

Even with the most powerful commercial quantum computer (still debate that dwave actual does quantum computing) the Universe would end due to a heat death before you crack anything of significance.

a reply to: lavatrance

From what I have gathered from more savvy folks than myself, pretty much anything can be hacked, if it's able to be accessed at all. If you are online, your system could be viewed. The government would, of course, hire the best they can get for such things, to be able to do what they need to do, and sometimes, perhaps, what they should not need to do.

I don't worry about it. If they couldn't get data from my computer, they could get it plenty of other ways. Unless the whole system goes rogue, they shouldn't be interested in me, anyway, so I see no reason to worry. If it does, everyone could be targeted, so, again....

a reply to: Maxatoria

the compilation tools never got checked over

That's an interesting point.

So, if one is completely paranoid, one would have to start from scratch:
1. Completely audit all of the source code that you are going to use to build the development tools.
2. Hack some binary code together to create a simple assembler.
3. Use the assembler to build a simple linker and compiler from their ASM sources.
4. Use the simple tools to build the runtime libraries and more sophisticated linker and compiler tools.
5. Compile and link the encryption tool of choice.

That would provide a relatively high confidence level in the build environment, and thus the encryption tool.

But, as you said, the tools are probably already pretty safe given their maturity.

-dex

Nobody's mentioned PGP. It's relatively simple to use and and even the worlds biggest, future, quantum supercomputer would take years to brute force it.
People should be using this.

originally posted by: homerJ
Nobody's mentioned PGP. It's relatively simple to use and and even the worlds biggest, future, quantum supercomputer would take years to brute force it.
People should be using this.

PGP was quite popular in its heyday, memory fails me but I know there were some growing pains and legal matters. I quit using it years ago.

a reply to: BIGPoJo

At one point the spooks were complaining a lot about PGP then suddenly it went quiet...I bet they've sorted out the basics of how to break it reasonably easy.

From my research, a 4096 length PGP key is unbreakable unless you were a target important enough to warrant the worlds best supercomputer to dedicate a year of processing to you.
PGP works.
In fact I can't believe its not taught and used on a site like this.
Very strange indeed actually.????????