Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

There was a quote in a newspaper I unfortunately forget the location of about four years ago about a massive break through in encryption by the NSA post Snowden. Enough subtle hints about it. My working assumption had been it was RSA related. I noticed for example some interesting organisations changed their guidelines about its usage in past three years or so.


If it is what I think it is, then it's commonly believed that they broke commonly used Diffie-Hellman parameters, allowing them to break any connection encrypted using those.

The parameters can, in theory, be safely used by everyone, and generating them is relatively expensive. But because a few of these parameters were extremely widely used, and they were only 1024 bits strong, it is believed that a gargantuan effort to break them was worth it and the NSA did it.


Which organizations changed their guidelines?


This has been speculated since logjam was discovered.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: