On 8/31/13, Jon Callas <jon@callas.org> wrote:
Thus with a large budget, you do both. With one hand, you crack the crypto by cracking the software. When it works it works. When it doesn't, it doesn't. Stop stressing. With the other hand, you revel in the glory of silence. In silence you can think. You watch the band, you watch square dance. You just watch who is pairing with whom, where the lines cross and the beats are. Sometimes you can even guess the tune by watching the dance (which is also cryptanalysis).
I agree. Perhaps to extend my thought... right now we have a lot of current data (whether officially or leaked) from our favorite adversaries about the above. Yet only a tiny amount of data about the crypto. True, we can infer data about the crypto by seeing the growth in the above known alternatives, and from our own understanding of the crypto, the effectiveness of such alternatives, and from history. But that's not the same as directly seeing what the adversary has under their hat regarding the crypto. More of a note to watch our own inferences.