[Cryptography] Proof that the NSA does not have a quantum computer capable of attacking public key crypto (yet)

Troy Benjegerdes hozer at hozed.org
Thu Feb 11 20:18:19 PST 2016


On Thu, Feb 11, 2016 at 07:29:40PM +0000, Sean Lynch wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 9:03 PM grarpamp <grarpamp at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> >
> > Question is... will the new generation of leaksphere...
> > wikileaks, anonymous, darknets, the poitras / greenwalds,
> > ecuadors, technology, ethos, philosophy, rockstar, etc...
> > begin to elicit cracks in that?
> >
> 
> I certainly hope so, though it only really matters if their capabilities
> are beyond what the general public already believes them to be. In the
> realm of their pure crypto/cryptanalysis operations, there may not be much
> going on that's unexpected or even unethical. That stuff may happen in the
> social engineering department, e.g. the RSA bribe, which we found out
> about.

It would be really funny to find out that Bitcoin is a crowdsourced
rainbow-table like mechanism for the NSA to crack similiar keys for the
particular EC curve used.

The one thing Bitcoin is probably good for is putting out a testable
lure for any quantum computing DSA crackers. If you could, in theory
crack a $500million wallet, you have to find someone stupid enough
to have $500million worth of buy orders *on the market* if you wanted
out fast, or you'd have to pull it out with a straw over months or
years, all the while knowing that someone else could just crack the
keys you just cracked. That single wallet is worth less than $50M
if you succeed in cracking it.

Seems far easier to rob a bank or blackmail some executives.

If you start cracking a bunch of smaller wallets, that might be more
profitable, but would really probably take a whole team of people to
manage.

Now, if Coinbase, and all the other bitcoin mafioso that paid off the
right folks to exchange it for dollars would get Lloyds of London to
underwrite a policy guaranteeing a $500 million (dollar) prize to the
first proven key cracking, I expect you'd see a QC key cracker a lot
sooner than if the NSA is funding it.



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