Thursday, October 10, 2013

[htdrlxno] Strangely funded cryptographic attacks

It is curious that the war on pornography and the war on drugs, both issues some believe a questionable use of taxpayer funds, has resulted in very visible tests (and failures: Freedom Hosting, Eric Eoin Marques, Silk Road, Ross William Ulbricht) of cryptosystems against extremely powerful, well-funded, government agencies.  Attacks like these are what is needed to continue to improve these technologies.  One of the designed use cases of Tor is to protect private citizens against evil governments.  Such attacks would no doubt be attempted, but I mostly did not expect to see the result, instead assuming information about successfully breaking the enemy's code would be hidden under cloak and dagger.

Visible modulo the important issue Parallel Construction.

The takedown and takeover of Silk Road is especially notable because the FBI accomplished what countless hackers highly motivated by its Bitcoin treasure trove could not do.

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