A Few Thoughts on Cryptographic Engineering Some random thoughts about crypto. Notes from a course I teach. Pictures of my dachshunds.
Matthew Green September 5, 2013
On the NSA
Let me tell you the story of my tiny brush with the biggest crypto story of the year.
A few weeks ago I received a call from a reporter at ProPublica, asking me background questions about encryption. Right off the bat I knew this was going to be an odd conversation, since this gentleman seemed convinced that the NSA had vast capabilities to defeat encryption. And not in a 'hey, d'ya think the NSA has vast capabilities to defeat encryption?' kind of way. No, he'd already established the defeating. We were just haggling over the details.
Oddness aside it was a fun (if brief) set of conversations, mostly involving hypotheticals. If the NSA could do this, how might they do it? What would the impact be? I admit that at this point one of my biggest concerns was to avoid coming off like a crank. After all, if I got quoted sounding too much like an NSA conspiracy nut, my colleagues would laugh at me. Then I might not get invited to the cool security parties.
All of this is a long way of saying that I was totally unprepared for today's bombshell revelations describing the NSA's efforts to defeat encryption. Not only does the worst possible hypothetical I discussed appear to be true, but it's true on a scale I couldn't even imagine. I'm no longer the crank. I wasn't even close to cranky enough.
And since I never got a chance to see the documents that sourced the NYT/ProPublica story -- and I would give my right arm to see them -- I'm determined to make up for this deficit with sheer speculation. Which is exactly what this blog post will be.
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