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NSA Releases Secret Pre-History of Computers

Posted by samzenpus on from the please-forget-about-that-other-stuff dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The National Security Agency has declassified an eye-opening pre-history of computers used for code-breaking between the 1930s and 1960s. The 344 page report, entitled It Wasn't All Magic: The Early Struggle to Automate Cryptanalysis (pdf), it is available on the Government Attic web site. Government Attic has also just posted a somewhat less declassified NSA compendium from 1993: A Collection of Writings on Traffic Analysis. (pdf)"

34 of 167 comments (clear)

  1. Pay no attention by Tokolosh · · Score: 5, Funny

    to the man in the Russian airport.

    --
    Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
    1. Re:Pay no attention by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      What man? The media is now reporting that Snowden never made it to Moscow. In fact, they are now reporting that there is no record of a US citizen with that name, anymore. It was all a big misunderstanding. It was just an intelligence training exercise.

    2. Re:Pay no attention by FriendlyLurker · · Score: 4, Insightful

      All part of damage control - got to raise public opinion quick smart. You have no idea how many talking points have been written in the last week or so for the media employees (talk show and news anchors etc) to sprout off over in the next few days/months. Muddy, confuse, distract... ahh, propaganda...

    3. Re:Pay no attention by ibwolf · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Pay no attention to the man in the Russian airport.

      No, they want you to pay attention to him, to this, to ANYTHING except for what they (the US government and the NSA in particular) are actually doing with regards to you personal liberties. That is what they are trying to distract you from thinking about.

    4. Re:Pay no attention by TheCarp · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That is exactly what I was thinking. Since their secret program just blew up like semtex in a times square car bomb, they need to do some quick spin control. Look how we move tech forward people! Don't look at what we are doing now....look at new stuff we want to tell you about the past!

      Don't pay any mind to the way we spread our own brand of terror like anthrax spores through the sears tower ventilation system. Just pay attention to the muslamic terror groups that we want you to be afraid of, thats the terror that we are trying to create here for our purposes.

      --
      "I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
    5. Re:Pay no attention by ahabswhale · · Score: 3

      War is Peace
      Freedom is Slavery
      Ignorance is Strength

      (I tried to do all caps like in the book but /. wouldn't let me)

      --
      Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
    6. Re:Pay no attention by Gr8Apes · · Score: 2

      were there any alarm words you left out?

      --
      The cesspool just got a check and balance.
    7. Re:Pay no attention by tgd · · Score: 2

      they are now reporting that there is no record of a US citizen with that name

      At the risk of feeding a troll, being wooshed, or having the black helicopters come find me, I have some middle school yearbooks which say otherwise.

      *woosh*

      If the media really is reporting that Edward Snowden is a made up person, please, provide a citation.

    8. Re:Pay no attention by tgd · · Score: 2

      they are now reporting that there is no record of a US citizen with that name

      At the risk of feeding a troll, being wooshed, or having the black helicopters come find me, I have some middle school yearbooks which say otherwise.

      *woosh*

      If the media really is reporting that Edward Snowden is a made up person, please, provide a citation.

      I blame some sort of PRISM intercept for that *woosh* ending up in the wrong place.

    9. Re:Pay no attention by EuclideanSilence · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Well I for one am convinced. Thank god these files were classified, or else terrorists would know all about how to break WW2 codes. What if Snowden had leaked this? People could have died. People would have died.

      What other things besides obsolete WW2 cryptanalysis could the NSA be keeping from terrorists? That's why it's so important for us to trust them.

    10. Re:Pay no attention by show+me+altoids · · Score: 2

      You mean it wasn't just a viral advertisement for next year's "average guy hunted down by the government for knowing too much" blockbuster movie?

      "Enemy of the State 2: Electric Boogaloo"

      --
      I feel sorry for people that don't drink, because when they get up in the morning, that's as good as they're gonna feel
  2. First pwned! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Am I crazy for opening a PDF from the NSA?

    1. Re:First pwned! by egcagrac0 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Not if you did it in a VM running a LiveCD...

    2. Re:First pwned! by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Not particularly implausible if it has pictures(especially highish-quality and/or appallingly malcompressed ones). The actual exploit code is probably a pretty small percentage of the total.

    3. Re:First pwned! by Alsee · · Score: 4, Interesting

      If you're worried about a NSA attack, a VM isn't going to save you. There have been several known exploits to break out of VM's. That will get them access to any harddrive if there's one connected at all. And if there isn't, there have been occasional exploits to flash a rootkit into BIOS. They could also activate Wifi or Bluetooth to infect any nearby computers or smartphones or any other smart devices, which could even bounce the infection back to the current computer after it's rebooted without the LiveCD and/or without the VM and/or with the harddrive reconnected.

      -

      --
      - - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
  3. More Secret History by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    How about Bush's blackmail scheme where he used the NSA to try to obtain material to blackmail UN ambassadors into voting for invading Iraq. Most of the media treated that like it was secret...

    1. Re:More Secret History by Macchendra · · Score: 2

      All of the so-called "liberal" media was lockstep in keeping this illegal abuse secret.

  4. PDFS by stewsters · · Score: 5, Funny

    Hey you guys who are talking about Snowden, download this PDF with some cool additional code! Don't worry about it. I promise we didn't buy exploits from Adobe or Microsoft!

    1. Re:PDFS by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 3, Funny

      Hey you guys who are talking about Snowden, download this PDF with some cool additional code! Don't worry about it. I promise we didn't buy exploits from Adobe or Microsoft!

      Why buy what you can get for free?

    2. Re:PDFS by drinkypoo · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I'm not too worried about exploits from Adobe or Microsoft affecting evince...

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    3. Re:PDFS by gl4ss · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Hey you guys who are talking about Snowden, download this PDF with some cool additional code! Don't worry about it. I promise we didn't buy exploits from Adobe or Microsoft!

      Why buy what you can get for free?

      If you don't use up the budget you don't get more next year. Especially if your working at an agency that can't be measured for efficiency in any way.

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
  5. Of course it wasn't magic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    As we all know it was Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse, using a steam powered analog computer to break (and make) secret communications. Case closed, this is clearly more lies by the NSA.

  6. wrong topic by DoofusOfDeath · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Dear NSA, I think you're confused. The current topic of discussion is your ongoing violation of the 4th Amendment of the U.S. constitution.

    Compared to that, I truly doing give a fuck about your history of codebreaking.

    1. Re:wrong topic by intermodal · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I do care about the history of codebreaking, but it doesn't mean i'm going to trust the NSA to tell me the truth about it. Which is why I'm focusing more on their fourth amendment violations instead. And, of course, the potential repercussions the same violations are liable to have on our rights to free association, since apparently we can now be surveiled on the grounds of where a friend of a friend of a friend ordered pizza from that may have had a foreign national working there.

      --
      In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
  7. Oh, isn't this convenient... by Seumas · · Score: 5, Funny

    Squirrel!

  8. It is a good read... by mlts · · Score: 3, Interesting

    For something in the time periods mentioned, it is a good read, especially with the issues at the time.

    I would say that crypto advances and computers go hand in hand, from the mechanical rotor devices to more advanced algorithms like DES, then to ones that have a larger bitsize and block size (AES.)

    What will be the next big crypto advance is a next generation public key algorithm. RSA has been good, but it, DSA, and ECC can fall if a quantum computer of a decent size can be built. What is needed is a next generation public key algorithm, but those are a lot harder to come by than symmetric algos. What would be nice is an algorithm with a small key size like ECC (which since in theory a 256 bit ECC key is as secure as a 128 bit AES key), compared to 16384 bit keys for RSA.

    Of course, the applied crypto part is important as well.

  9. Re:Pre History? by ZombieBraintrust · · Score: 2

    Pre-History means "before recorded history". The term gets the point accross in this instance without being confusing. Although there is of course recorded history of computing before 1930. IBM was founded in 1911 after all as "Computing Tabulating Recording Company". So it is basically wrong.

  10. Re:Broken Link by flyingfsck · · Score: 4, Funny

    Got it for you. It is called stuxnet-prehistory.pdf.exe

    --
    Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
  11. NSA by mu51c10rd · · Score: 2

    No Safeguards Assured.

  12. Re:Pre History? by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

    I would note the qualifier: "secret pre-history."

    It's a formerly secret history, not a secret pre-history. The former is what you get when you hide the records. The latter is what you get when there are no records, and nobody talks about it (or everyone is silenced, or dies of natural causes, etc.)

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  13. Re:Broken Link by PPH · · Score: 2

    Damn you! That won't run on Linux!

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.
  14. "This site has been suspended" by vbraga · · Score: 2

    I just get "This site has been suspended" from the hosting provider. Anyone has alternative links to the pdfs?

    --
    English is not my first language. Corrections and suggestions are welcome.
    1. Re:"This site has been suspended" by vtTom · · Score: 3, Informative

      Found the document here... http://cryptome.org/2013/06/NSA-WasntAllMagic_2002.pdf

  15. Re:Hmm by chill · · Score: 4, Informative

    Ummm...nope.

    Requested date: 04-August-2012
    Released date: 29-May-2013
    Posted date: 24-June-2013

    Requested date: 02-August-2012
    Released date: 11-June-2013
    Posted date: 24-June-2013

    --
    Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.