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.
Thanks for sending the NYT article John. I am lucky to have arrived here in India just as the rolling series of local elections took place – and based on the NYT article, it is worth mentioning this to you.
All of India is electrified by the impressive win in the state of Delhi of the AAP, the anti-corruption party. I have been surprised reading the newspapers that what everyone is excited about is that a third party founded on principle could win anything. (Local elections are sometimes won by 3rd parties if they are ethnically/religiously oriented, in the areas where these groups are majorities).
“As long as we don't piss off all of the people all of the time, we can keep living large.”
Like the US, the assumption has been that India will never go for a third party, this despite it being a parliamentary system. How this plays out in terms of governing remains to be seen, BUT the AAP won on its stand and promise to fight corruption, attracting both the middle class (which usually supports the liberal Congress Party) and the poor (who tend to support the conservative BJP). Both parties are widely seen as hopelessly corrupt.
Maybe there is a lesson here for a smaller democracy, ours (India has 1.2 billion people, and 750 million registered voters!) As the NYT article showed, people don't see themselves as Centrists, and are divided on so many issues. But we are surely sick of the US style corruption, which is in the popular mind focused on weal financial regulations.
Hope all is well and holiday cheer to you and Margo,
I am not an Obama fan, as anyone who reads SR regularly knows. I find the disconnect between the soaring language in his speeches and the reality of how his Executive Branch operates — an issue distinct from the problems of his having to deal with a corrupt Theocratic Rightist House — very alarming. Two of the most disturbing aspects are the rise of the Orwelli! an surveillance under Obama's Administration, and, concurrently, the suppression of freedom of the press. A democracy without a free aggressive press very quickly ceases to be a democracy. History is quite clear on this. Here is an excellent essay on the relevant issues. This special report originally appeared on the Committee to Protect Journalists website, and is reprinted here with their permission.
This report will examine all these issues: legal policies of the Obama administration that disrupt relationships between journalists and government sources; the surveillance programs that cast doubt on journalists’ ability to protect those sources; restrictive practices for disclosing information that make it more difficult to hold the government accountable for its actions and decision-making; and manipulative use of administration-controlled media to circumvent scrutiny by the press.
Remember something called the War on Poverty? The Great Society?
President Lyndon Johnson declared it and announced it in 1965. Since then, the federal government and state governments have poured staggering amounts of dollars into the program.
How many dollars? Does anyone know?
In his 1992 book, Paved With Good Intentions, Jared Taylor puts the figure (1965-1992) at $2.5 trillion. So, for the sake of argument, let’s accept that.
Yet, by 1992 (and to an even greater degree since then), poverty had accelerated in America. Had gotten much, much worse.
So the logical question was and is: where did all that money go?
A strange Washington Poststory gives readers the impression that morale is low at the NSA because President Obama hasn't visited to signal his support for the intelligence agency, even as Edward Snowden's leaks are causing many to criticize it.
The headline: “NSA morale down after Edward Snowden revelations, former U.S. officials say.”
The lead:
Morale has taken a hit at the National Security Agency in the wake of controversy over the agency’s surveillance activities, according to former officials who say they are dismayed that President Obama has not visited the agency to show his support.
What these “dismayed” sources told the newspaper:
Supporters of the NSA say staffers are not feeling the love.
“The agency, from top to bottom, leadership to rank and file, feels that it is had no support from the White House even though it’s been carrying out publicly approved intelligence missions,” said Joel Brenner, NSA inspector general from 2002 to 2006. “They feel they’ve been hung out to dry, and they’re right.”
A former U.S. official—who like several other former officials interviewed for this story requested anonymity because he still has dealings with the agency—said: “The president has multiple constituencies—I get it. But he must agree that the signals intelligence NSA is providing is one of the most important sources of intelligence today. So if that’s the case, why isn’t the president taking care of one of the most important elements of the national security apparatus?”
Is this just an attempt to exert pressure on the president and stave off even the mildest criticism of the NSA? The sourcing here seems awfully shoddy. Is a former NSA inspector general who hasn't worked for the agency in seven years really qualified to pronounce upon the current feelings of every employee? Is the proposition that NSA staffers are all of one mind about recent controversies something we'd credit even if a current NSA employee said it? Did the anonymous “former U.S. official” ever work for the NSA? What “dealings” does he or she presently have with the agency, and how remunerative are those dealings?
After reading what these former officials had to say, Marcy Wheeler points out that NSA employees have a reason for low morale that has nothing to do with Obama's support:
Most of the NSA’s employees have not been read into many of these programs … That raises the distinct possibility that NSA morale is low not because the President hasn’t given them a pep talk, but because they’re uncomfortable working for an Agency that violates its own claimed rules so often. Most of the men and women at NSA have been led to believe they don’t spy on their fellow citizens. Those claims are crumbling, now matter how often the NSA repeats the word “target.” [PBI: Emphasis added.]
Although he may not have intended it as such, all the publicity surrounding the recent published book by Erik Prince, founder of the private security firm once known as Blackwater, has actually served a useful public policy purpose; namely, highlighting the near ubiquitous presence of private military and security contractors (PMSC), as well as other types of private contractors, and the cost and benefits of using them.
When it comes to the costs of outsourcing formerly inherently governmental functions there are many different ways to calculate them but one relatively under-examined way is to consider the dangers of allowing what in almost any other industry would be considered a conflict of interest. Or. To put it more colorfully, does it really serve the public interest to allow a PMSC fox guard the government hen house?
Specifically, does anyone really think it is reasonable to assume that placing personal services contractors (Note: “personal services” is the umbrella category that all PMSC contracts fall under) in government procurement offices will produce dispassionate, objective assessments of the pros and cons of using PMSC?
Does anyone think that is a good idea; anyone, anyone at all? Hmmm, your silence is deafening.
Well, if you think this is an absurd idea rest assured you are not alone. William Charles Moorhouse is in the house. Major Moorhouse serves in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps and is currently the Chief of Contract and Fiscal Law for the U.S. Army Expeditionary Contracting Command.
Individual soldiers deserted in huge numbers, whole units refused to fight, there was rebellion in some Barracks, and numerous incidents of fragging, some preceded by warnings to officers and non-coms to back off, others not.
There were large mass demonstrations at home in America and the situation became so dire, that President Lyndon Johnson was told by his advisers and the Ruling Cabal that he must step aside and could not run for a second term.
Most of this was kept from the American public by a Controlled Major Mass Media (CMMM) which served in most cases as official USG propaganda dispensers.
Henry Kissinger was the interface between the Ruling Cabal, the Secret Shadow Government (SSG) and President Nixon and basically ran Nixon’s foreign policy.
Nixon was elected and seemed to be led around by the nose by his National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger who is now viewed by many as a hardened war criminal for his many dealings in Vietnam, Myanmar and other places which directly resulted in mass death. He is also blamed for his manipulative, botched negotiations and recommendation to leave so many American POW/MIAs behind with secret plans to have them assassinated in jungle prison camps by special Observation Groups (SOGs), actually Special Operations Groups and aircraft dispensed poisonous VX gas when that failed.
It’s important to note that because JFK was Assassinated by a high military Cabal including LBJ, J. Edgar Hoover, GHWB, Dulles, Lansdale, Lemnitzer, etc. that Vietnam became possible as an illegal perpetual, un-winnable war for profits in the first place. Once JFK was out of the way, the US Military and the defense industry and banks surrounding became the Secret Shadow Government, and began ruling the visible, ceremonial government which actually became a hired prostitute of the SSG.
It takes creative Psyops by the top Policy-Makers to elicit a nation’s support for any new war.
No nation’s citizens are eager to send their children to war to be maimed and die in mass, and it take special high level psychological operations (Psyops) to process the society’s group mind to motivate them adequately to want revenge against another nation or group.
