[Discuss] KeePassX

Kent Borg kentborg at borg.org
Wed Aug 14 07:46:12 EDT 2013


On 08/13/2013 05:04 PM, Jerry Feldman wrote:
> The real issue is determining who and what to monitor.

That is the key.  For years the idea is that the NSA is selective and 
decides what traffic to analyze, what messages to try to decrypt, what 
targets to actively attack (with such things as a man-in-the-middle 
attack).  They can't attack everything, they have to choose.  Much of 
this discussion is based in this traditional world.

Except the recent news blows that out of the water.

They want *everything*.

That means that they don't have time to attack any real encryption, they 
are going after plaintext--and trivial encodings of plaintext. Yes, they 
still will do more traditional work, but all of that is removed from the 
"everything" efforts.  The costs are completely different, their 
capacity to do real crypto work is quite finite. Their "everything" 
efforts are infinite, but only as long as they are efficient.

I am arguing that every measure that makes their "everything" efforts 
inefficient is a blow against this blanket surveillance.

-kb



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