Huh?
Researchers Break RSA 4096 Encryption With Just A Microphone And A Couple Of Emails
As if it wasn’t enough that the NSA paid RSA $10 million to adopt an algorithm that wasn’t entirely secure, researchers have now demonstrated that they can break even RSA 4096 bit encryption with little more than a few emails and a microphone. And that microphone can indeed just be one in a smartphone sitting on the desk.
Researchers from Tel Aviv University and the Weizmann Institute of Science discovered that they could steal even the largest, most secure RSA 4,096-bit encryption keys simply by listening to a laptop as it decrypts data.
To accomplish the trick, the researchers used a microphone to record the noises made by the computer, then ran that audio through filters to isolate the vibrations made by the electronic internals during the decryption process. With that accomplished, some cryptanalysis revealed the encryption key in around an hour.
Well, no, pace Engadget it is a little more complex than that. You can’t just listen to a computer and break the algos just like that.
Read full article with how they did it.
ROBERT STEELE (Comment as Posted at Forbes)
This excellent article has been cross pointed (headline, extract, link) to Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog (“The truth at any cost lowers all other costs.”)
In 2009, writing in CounterPunch (“Intelligence for the President — AND Everyone Else”), I said this about General Keith Alexander:
I share with Jim Bamford, the foremost chronicler of NSA’s gifted past, enormous disdain for the manner in which NSA under Generals Mike Hayden and Keith Alexander have become living atrocities. Good people trapped in a bad system, a system that is now deeply unethical, unconstitutional, and largely worthless.
NSA has not prevented any terrorist attacks. NSA processes less than 5% of what is collects. NSA is so stupid at the management level that they built a data center in Utah — a water-stressed state — requiring 1.7 million gallons of clean water every single day.
For over 20 years a handful of us have sought to draw attention to the grotesque disconnect between what we pay for secret intelligence, and the real world. I dare to hope that this debacle will put the conversation in the forefront when Congress comes back from its recess. Congress should be asking itself three questions:
1. Is NSA’s debacle the tipping point for an angry populism that destroys the two-party tyranny?
2. Is this the year that we are forced to stop borrowing one trillion a year to pay for the 50% of the US Government budget that is outright pork?
3. Is this the year I get fired for being stupid, unethical, and divorced from my constituents?
I pray the answer to all three questions is a resounding YES.
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NSA @ Phi Beta Iota