On 4/29/16, Ray Dillinger <bear@sonic.net> wrote:

On 04/28/2016 05:41 PM, grarpamp wrote:

...

On 4/28/16, david wong <davidwong.crypto@gmail.com> wrote:

...

so as long as we don't discover a crazy breakthrough.

This "breakthrough" hasn't yet been further identified / described... https://www.wired.com/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter

I keep hearing rumors about this "breakthrough." I don't know how seriously to take them, but I suspect that if it exists it's more likely to be deliberate sabotage at the hardware/software/firmware level than it is to be the often-implicated Quantum Supercomputer or major mathematical insight.

But I keep hearing noises about a fundamental breakthrough in cryptology, with the strong implication that it's some kind of new cryptanalytic technique, mathematical insight, or design principle for special-purpose custom hardware.

If you actually read and reassemble all the references in the article (which I won't do herein), they all refer to a 'cryptanalytic' breakthrough over modern crypto, further assisted with compute power, and deployed. That is obviously not just academic powers of two yielding moot partial solutions over limited rounds. And not sabotage, exploits, etc. Of course those are widespread, but they are not part of the 'cryptanalytic breakthrough' subthread of the article.

Assuming they can get four orders of magnitude of hardware efficiency for purpose-built AES cracking silicon, and back it up with scores of billions of dollars per year investment in constantly updating overwhelming volumes of this custom hardware -- I still don't see anybody cracking AES-128 any time soon without either a mathematical insight so profound as to be completely unexpected

Maths and crackpots love a nice quiet life with everything taken care of so they can spend decades working their hard problems and crazy angles. The NSA provides that, and protects it and its results as their crown jewels. Do not underestimate it.

or a fundamentally new computing technology like large scale Quantum Computers.

This begins to matter when basic research yields a point where a secret investment of say $100B or less pays off. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_megaprojects http://www.visualcapitalist.com/death-taxes-2015-visual-guide-tax-dollars-go...

If the fundamental mathematical breakthrough is real, it's very surprising that it hasn't leaked

See crown jewels...

or been duplicated yet

See Maths...

but in that case it's only a matter of time before one or the other or both occur.

Leaks can occur until time forgotten. Math occurs randomly. Snowden did not have access to the crypto compartments. No leaker seems to have had relavent access to post-WWII modern crypto.

Speculating about the effect of a fundamental mathematical breakthrough is at best hard to do meaningfully

Those subject to the dark must speculate, those with knowledge of it can execute.

Physicists: "A large-scale quantum supercomputer is very doubtful."

Mathematicians: "A mathematical insight of such magnitude is very doubtful."

Wagering against physics is one thing, against the human mind... that may not be a wise investment. "...the ability to crack current public encryption." Some investigative journalist should be all over following up the crypto part of Bamford's piece as the scoop of a lifetime. For that matter, where is Bamford's own followup? Details of such a breakthrough are likely to serve and advance public knowledge and application by providing solution to some long desirable hard problem or going off somewhere new that we've never gone before. Keeping those kind of secrets for yourself is an affront to Humankind. Till then, everyone, including the keepers, rots in the Dark Ages.