Russia & China cracked the encrypted Snowden files?

[Guest]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/14/us-britain-security-idUSKBN0OT0XF20150614

 

Britain has pulled out agents from live operations in "hostile countries" after Russia and China cracked top-secret information contained in files leaked by former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, the Sunday Times reported.

 

What do you guys think. Is it possible that they cracked it or have they got the information from Snowden?

[InactiveUser 188]

This reeks of a PR move to drive home the message that, quote, "nobody should be in any doubt that Edward Snowden has caused immense damage".

I think there are three possible scenarios for how this actually went down, but none of them really fits their story!

Scenario 1: CHI/RUS cracked the actual encryption.

Extremely unlikely for three reasons:
1. We know Snowden instructed journalists to use TrueCrypt and gpg, so there's no reason to believe he used anything inferior himself. He's no dummy, come on.

2. So, now that we can safely assume he used proper crypto, they would have to have, at the very least, cracked AES. Verrrry unplausible doomsday scenario.   
3. How in the world would US/UK spooks even know about this? If they had high-up double agents in CHI/RUS, they would keep this quiet, right? You don't waste them for a little news story.
On the same token, CHI/RUS wouldn't just let US/UK know about this, either.

 

Scenario 2: CHI/RUS "convinced" Snowden to "cooperate".
Compared to cracking AES, it's much more plausible they "cracked" Snowden. But in that case, US/UK would be flat-out lying (shocker, I know!) - so how believable does that make anything in this story?

Scenario 3: Snowden's files are not related to US/UK pulling out spies.

It's just too convenient to blame this on Snowden when you just had to suffer a devastating Chinese hack of federal personnel files

 

 

 

EDIT:

Also read Gallagher and Greenwald  on this subject

[zhang888 1066]

I also think it was somehow related to the OPM hack, Duqu 2, or some other breach that didn't go public.

And, s/pulled out/replaced

 

[Guest]

Interested in Staff's thoughts on this, even tho' i suspect it's somewhat like sheivoko said.

 

AES encryption is what is protecting us here, right?

 

thanks

[zhang888 1066]

Interested in Staff's thoughts on this, even tho' i suspect it's somewhat like sheivoko said.

 

AES encryption is what is protecting us here, right?

 

thanks

 

 

With all due respect to Staff, I believe Mr. Schneier has the answers to crypto related questions on that matter.

He is considered by many as one of the best experts in this area, and helped designing many things we use.

 

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/03/can_the_nsa_bre.html

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/05/more_on_the_nsa_1.html

 

 

But the best protection would of course be *not* being involved in things that might put you on their target list

in the first place, right?

[knighthawk 19]

My vote: This is false story, either bad information, or it's just a very badly thought out smear attempt aimed toward ES, or perhaps a convenient misdirection related to some other type of breach that has been discovered.  There are too many things about the story that just don't add up (far above and beyond the "is xyz encryption breakable angle), so I say basically - didn't happen.

 

 

I also think it was somehow related to the OPM hack

 

Agreed, the timing fits, my guess is that incident, as bad as it's been reported so far in the open, was probably even far worse and more extensive than we've been officially told to date.

[OpenSourcerer 1442]

Or it's just PR against Russia. Or a combination of things posted here.

 

(Sent via Tapatalk - this generally means I'm not sitting in front of my PC)

[jsanon 6]

https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/comments/1x50xl/time_and_energy_required_to_bruteforce_a_aes256/

[OmniNegro 155]

If anyone in the world had the ability to break a cryptographic legend such as those used in Truecrypt, they would have to be the biggest fools ever to let the world know that when they could gain so much more by keeping it for their own use and only revealing it after they invented a cover story that does not betray that capacity.

 

In World War 2 Churchil let an English city be destroyed entirly rather than reveal that he had the ability to decrypt some of Enigma.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coventry_Blitz

 

History repeats itself. We are just too foolish to notice most of the time.