D&C GLug - Home Page

[ Date Index ] [ Thread Index ] [ <= Previous by date / thread ] [ Next by date / thread => ]

Re: [LUG] DIY :Re: OT: NSA: Do they or don't they?

 

On Sun, 8 Sep 2013, Tom wrote:
No irony involved at all - they were internal documents not for public viewing therefore they are likely not to be the propaganda they want to feed us. This gives them much higher confidence.

Firstly, a lot of them were presentation slides, that looked like internal propaganda. As in any organisations, there must be a lot of internal politics going on at the NSA, with different groups of people promoting different projects. So when someone presents the work of their group as "we can read almost everything" this may in fact mean "we can read a lot, but frankly anyone using sensible security can avoid their traffic being read" (in a particular context).

Secondly, if I was high up at the NSA, I would have some fake presentations lying around in a tricky-but-not-too-tricky way to access by the Snowdens of this world. I might even have someone present them.

I'm not saying things aren't bad - they are. But by just reading the NSA's internal presentations, you could easily be convinced that the NSA has basically broken the maths behind today's crypto. I think we had already concluded that they haven't.

Martijn.


--
The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG
http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list
FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq