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Police Need 90 Days To Crack Hard Drives
Twyko64 writes "The UK police may need 90 days to hold terrorist suspects because it takes that long to crack a suspect's PC hard drive." From the article: "Combining the analysis, the translation and second stage analysis, add inter-country co-operation and interview strategy formation, and from the police point of view, the existing 14 days is inadequate and 90 days doesn't look excessive. Another factor is encryption sophistication. If 256-bit triple-DES or similar techniques are used then decryption could require supercomputer-levels of cracking."
Nothing for you to see here. Please move along.
Hmmmm. Guess I'll come back in 90 days for the dupe...
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
*I* always use at *least* 1024-bit AES!
They should just pin the suspect down and pump five rounds into their head.
Oh wait...
Well, that is because you have your password written on a sticky note which is stuck to the monitor.
Clearly, Google is the next Microsoft.
By using SUN Grid... noone else is, so plenty of CPU power....
There should be a mod for "+1, Creepy".
"Eddies," said Ford, "in the space-time continuum." "Ah," nodded Arthur, "is he? Is he?"
Seriously, nobody, including name-your-favourite-government-agency, is brute forcing a 256-bit AES key. Not in 90 days. Not in 90 years.
0x00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00003039? That's the kind of encryption key an idiot would have on his luggage!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Pssst, like the NSA doesn't have quantum computers behind that triple fence that can brute force 256bit keys in an instant.
Now, shut up and help me find my tinfoil hat.
30 days to figure out how to write "Allah" in arabic.
60 days to figure out how to type an arabic password.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
"You honor, we are going to have to hold the suspect for 2.154E+E122 years."
Good to know. Therefore I'm not an idiot, because mine is
01234567 89ABCDEF 01234567 89ABCDEF 01234567 89ABCDEF 01234567 89ABCDEF 01234567 89ABCDEF.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Well, in that case, the USA will ship you off to some country where torture is legal, and CIA operatives will proceed to beat the secrets out of you. Now THAT'S brute force...
End of lesson. You may press the button.
You are writing the above as a pubic hair wig?
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
If you extrapolate it to "We get to hold people for as long as it takes to find whatever we're looking for on their hard drive", then they can argue for holding you for 200 years, depending how you might have hidden data on the hard drive.
- "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
2. Store keyfile in a safe place.
3. Get a defective USB stick. Label "HD KEYFILE" in big red letters. Keep it on the computer desk at all times.
4. Get a 3.5" Floppy. Preferably from pre-1990. Wipe with magnet a couple of times. Label "HD KEYFILE BACKUP" in big red letters. Put on shelf next to computer.
5. Get a blank CD-R. Fill with PR0N. Label "PR0N + HD KEYFILE BACKUP". Mistreat CD-R a little (preferably adding some scratches on the inside. Leave in CD-Rom drive.
In case of arrest:
1. "Um
2. "What ?! It doesn't work ? Good thing I have a backup. It's on the floppy disk."
3. "What now ?! It's broken ? Good thing I have another backup of it on the CD with my PR0N colelction
4. "The CD doesn't work ? OH NO, ALL MY PR0N is GONE ! AAAAARGH !"
You could be locked up forever!
Test 1 2 3 4
I can crack my harddrive in a split second by using a sledge hammer.
The future is in beta
yeah. and creating a mirror of the data is much too difficult to be feasible.
Do you write scripts for "Twenty-four" by any chance?
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
0x00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00003039? That's amazing! That's the same encryption key I have on my luggage!
Des uses 64-bit, really 56-bit. Correct
3Des uses 128-bit, really 112-bit. It's named 3DES because it does 3 DES encryptions with two separate keys (actually encrypt1-decrypt2-encrypt1). Doing it the obvious (enc1,enc2) way is insecure and can be broken in 2^56 steps (one keysearch) if you have a really big amount of memory, so it does EDE. The D part is there so that you can set E1 equal to E2 and use the same subroutines for 3DES and DES.
256-bit anything cannot be brute forced. Brute force requires that you iterate through every possible key. Now, according to thermodynamics, it takes kT energy to set or clear a bit, where k is Boltzmann's constant and T is the ambient temperature of the system. The coldest you can run it at is 2.3Kelvin (the ambient temperature of the universe). Any colder, and you need more energy to run a heat sink. So, merely to iterate a 256-bit counter through all it's values (never mind actually using an encryption algorithm) requires (2.3)x(2^256)x(k), which is a lot more energy than could be gained by blowing up the Sun in a nuclear reactor and converting it all to energy. So, no cracking of 256-bit keys.
Crappy passwords are another thing, though
Day 1: Brought in suspects' computer. For the darndest reason it wouldn't turn on so Sgt. Morris and I went on a 2 hour coffee break. Upon return discovered that computer wasn't plugged in. It was getting late so stamped card and went home. Day 2: Sgt. Morris (who is more experienced than me) put the cd we use for scanning into the suspect's computer but it wouldn't load, no matter what we did. Went on 1.5 hour coffee break. Returned and eventually found out CD was inserted in upside down. Was late so stamped card and went home. Day 3: Managed to 'hack' into suspects' computer! Found suspect's 'dirty stuff' folder, and scanned it by hand for security reasons. After 4 hours was exhausted so called it a day and signed off early. (Note to self: Inquire about purchasing cat's outfit for Mrs. Winterton) Day 4: Suspect seems to have had an affection for fight games (note to self: Add "psychotic tendencies" to suspects portfolio). Played some 'Mortale Kombatt' against Sgt. Morris, who managed to beat me numerous amount of times, adding insult to injury by 'finishing me' in several gruesome ways. Ate sandwich, stamped card and went home. Day 5: Finally beat Morris at Mortal Kombat! Now we're getting somewhere! .......
Marvellous. So here's how "the bad guys" (tm) will fool the coppers.
:)
1 Buy computer with big hard drive.
2 Get geek to store loads of "nonsense" data encrypted with as strong a key as possible (i.e. shopping lists, lists of birthdays, stuff from encyclopedias)
3 Store "bad stuff" (tm) in head only.
4 Get arrested, claim you "were wondering what all those junk files were" and wait 90 days whilst the forensics bods decrypt the useless data.
5 Get let out.
6 Profit !
(yes I admit it this is a piss poor version of the Slashdot "profit" post
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !