Slashdot Mirror
New Attack Against Multiple Encryption Functions
An anonymous reader sends word of a paper presented a few days back by Adi Shamir, the S in RSA, that promises a new form of mathematical attack against a broad range of cryptographic ciphers. The computerworld.com.au report leans heavily on Schneier's blog entry from the Crypto 2008 conference and the attached comments. Shamir's paper has not been published yet. "[The new attack could affect] hash functions (such as MD5, SHA-256), stream ciphers (such as RC4), and block ciphers (such as DES, Triple-DES, AES) at the Crypto 2008 conference. The new method of cryptanalysis has been called a 'cube attack' and formed part of Shamir's invited presentation at Crypto 2008 — 'How to solve it: New Techniques in Algebraic Cryptanalysis.' The new attack method isn't necessarily going to work against the exact ciphers listed above, but it offers a new generic attack method that can target basically formed ciphers irrespective of the basic cipher method in use, provided that it can be described in a 'low-degree polynomial equation'... What may be the biggest outcome from this research is the range of devices in widespread use that use weaker cryptographic protection, due to power or size limitations, that are now vulnerable to a straightforward mathematical attack."
I store all of my passwords in plain text!
I talk about stuff.
The summary is blatantly wrong. Take a look at the schneier blog post (from 3 days ago) and the second update: this attack only works against LSFR encryption of a low order, which means that none of the schemes mentioned in the summary are actually affected.
Now, if I were to actually RTFA, I would know whether the article was slow on the uptake or slashdot, and whether or not they should have known that the attack wouldn't affect the major algorithms, just smaller ones. Either Slashdot's dead wrong on this or computerworld is, and I'm not sure which one's more likely.
As Schneier wrote (emphasis mine): "this attack doesn't apply to any block cipher -- DES, AES, Blowfish, Twofish, anything else -- in common use; their degree is much too high." Now, correct the misleading summary (or be uninformed FUD spreader like Computerworld).
The reason to casually encrypt phone calls or any other data is to prevent the casual snooping of same.
Look at this way -- the barrier to entry for snooping your data is very low, and getting lower with each
new executive order. On the other hand the barrier to entry on snooping your data can be set arbitrarily high;
you can choose anything from 56 bit single-DES to 2048 bit RC4. The effort required to casually snoop you for
no other reason has now exploded. It was fear of people adopting this strategy and blocking the casual snooping
that inspired the clipper chip. It was the people's laziness, ignorance or both towards protecting their privacy
and their fear of terror that has eroded any expectation of privacy now, which is truly unfortunate.
If we had an expectation of privacy in this country, I think things would be very different now with regards to
all the second order effects such as identity theft.
I do one better. I use inkblot tests. I can leave them in plain sight and their totally secure.
Co-worker: Your password is "flower"?
Me: What? No. It's "zombie clown hitting fish with hammer". What's wrong with you?
Those who believe the Internet is private,
find their privates are on the Internet.
I'm sure this post is encrypted...If only there were a way to use Schneier's algorithm...Wait...Got it! Here is the decrypted text:
Help fight poverty: Punch a poor person.
Me too. It's ******
What?
Your password is hunter2?
Nonsense. The real solution is to get a court order banning the guy from giving his presentation. After all, as has been demonstrated just recently, court orders are the preferred means of securing anything.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
While finding collisions quickly does indeed show MD5 has weaknesses, no one has found a efficient way to match an existing checksum. For most that's the definition of completely broken.