Comment

Comment by lolcraft

What I find really interesting about the NSA is their Suite A: classified algorithms (!) used to protect the most sensitive documents (!!) with hilariously bad security records (!!!).

Take for instance the Skipjack cipher (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skipjack_(cipher)), a Type I cipher ("endorsed by the NSA for securing classified and sensitive U.S. Government information") which was evaluated, for the purpose of security, by "some of the world's most accomplished and famous experts in combinatorics and abstract algebra", and finally declassified due to concerns expressed by other cryptographers about its security.

Biham and Shamir broke it the day after it was declassified.

parent lolcraft 13 years ago

Discussion

Live from the official Hacker News API

A modern reader for Hacker News · SvelteKit + Skeleton