Not even FBI was able to decrypt files of Daniel Dantas

[Dwarden]

and why FBI not written application for http://boinc.berkeley.edu/ utilizing both CPU and GPU computing (in case OpenCL drivers availability)

i'm pretty sure lot of people would be willing to take part in clearly defined project e.g. court / investigation case ID number

[MR_Candyman]

Well ya duh, I mean if the password is long enough and complex enough it will take years to break it with current technology i.e. the brute force attack

My opinion is that in the future AI could have a major impact in such cryptography cases as it could be possible to maybe detect a pattern or something in the attempts of cracking or maybe I have been watching too many Action/Sci-Fi movies

I wonder if they'll eventually come out with a tech that will recognise when a specific digit is correct in the guess. From that it wouldn't have to re-guess that digit so it can focus on the rest. This would make it FAR quicker since for each digit it would then only have to guess a maximum of 96 times, each time it gets one right it doesn't have to re-guess it. I'm sure there has to be some way of polling the result in that way

[Dark Atheist]

glad i used a 15 digit code using captitals and numbers and stuff, if only i had a spare usb drive and port then i could use a keyfile :devil:

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

I wonder if they'll eventually come out with a tech that will recognise when a specific digit is correct in the guess. From that it wouldn't have to re-guess that digit so it can focus on the rest. This would make it FAR quicker since for each digit it would then only have to guess a maximum of 96 times, each time it gets one right it doesn't have to re-guess it. I'm sure there has to be some way of polling the result in that way

Encryption doesn't work like that (and if it does, it's a bad encryption) You need the whole key, or you get none of the data.

[boogerjones]

and why FBI not written application for http://boinc.berkeley.edu/ utilizing both CPU and GPU computing (in case OpenCL drivers availability)

i'm pretty sure lot of people would be willing to take part in clearly defined project e.g. court / investigation case ID number

LOL, that'd be a great way for the government to waste everybody's time and potentially ruin a case. The guy is probably using a lengthy passphrase so a distributed attack probably wouldn't work. Even if it did, it would take a long time; in which case the entire thing would be thrown out for violating the speedy-trial provision of the 6th Amendment. And I've never heard of the government levying the people of the world against a single defendant, so I doubt that would fly in a court as well.

[tiagosilva29]

Dantas is such a ****ing *******, but good for him.

[boogerjones]

I wonder if they'll eventually come out with a tech that will recognise when a specific digit is correct in the guess. From that it wouldn't have to re-guess that digit so it can focus on the rest.

One of the specific designs of cryptographic hash algorithms is to avoid such an information leak.

[hdood]

That's not what movies taught me.

[+M2Ys4U Subscriber¹]

Cryptography needs to be taught more. I'm surprised that the Neowin crowd don't know much about how encryption works.

[MR_Candyman]

Cryptography needs to be taught more. I'm surprised that the Neowin crowd don't know much about how encryption works.

Meh, I've always been more a hardware guy than software. I've never really cared about encryption personally. One thing I've learned through the years though is there will eventually be a way to hack anything. It might take a long time but eventually it'll happen.

[bjoswald]

One of the first rules of making a strong password is not using a Dictionary word. So I guess that's their first mistake.

Watch, it's probably 'braziliscool[birth year]'.

[TechFreak:)]

One thing I've learned through the years though is there will eventually be a way to hack anything. It might take a long time but eventually it'll happen.

Of course, but then we will have better encryption algorithms, which will then be impossible to decrypt without a password. And a few years later, we will be able to hack them, but then we will have even better ones.

[Azusa]

Why not just drop the drives off at Defcon and let them have a go?

[Dwarden]

it's probably just first million places of PI

then substract any number you love

then add MD5 hash of word google to begining of the above

then phrase NobodyCanCatchMe at end ...

try break this passphrase :)

Why not just drop the drives off at Defcon and let them have a go?

maybe because they don't want world to know that they already read such encryption realtime {j/k}

[+M2Ys4U Subscriber¹]

Meh, I've always been more a hardware guy than software. I've never really cared about encryption personally. One thing I've learned through the years though is there will eventually be a way to hack anything. It might take a long time but eventually it'll happen.

All encryption is breakable, but with a strong enough passphrase (and an un-broken algorithm) the universe will undergo heat death before current computational power can break it.

It's all based on factorising very large numbers into very large primes (with the passphrase XOR'd in there somewhere) which takes a long time to break with classical (i.e. non-quantum) computers.

[acnpt]

....and that's when you get laws which require you to give up keys.

[funkymunky]

Cool reply :)

We have that law in place in the UK.

However I'd rather take the 3 years(?) prison time for not giving up my "password" than be charged with Terrorism or CP.

I don't think anybody actually thought the US government had some special way to get peoples' crypto keys. They very likely have large precomputed hash tables for some algorithms since that's the best value when a salt isn't used. They probably also have a distributed hardware cluster, but I highly doubt they'd tie it up for months on some Brazilian guy.

That's a good starting point, but it ignores important factors. Programs like PGP and Truecrypt use key-derivation functions that iterate hash algorithms to increase the time need to derive the key. Truecrypt uses 1000-2000 iterations; PGP measures your CPU speed and uses a number of iterations that take 1/10 of a CPU-second to calculate on your machine.

A far more practical case for the government will be to press Congress to enact legislation that forces you to provide your passphrase. The constitutionality of being compelled is already being tested in the courts. In the case of Sebastian Boucher, an idiot who showed a border patrol agent his kiddy porn and verbally admitted his computer had kiddy porn on it, he was forced by a court to type his passphrase in to unlock a PGP-encrypted virtual disk. But most US courts would probably not compel you to provide your passphrase if the government didn't already have direct knowledge know that your computer contained specific and probably illegal material.

Most courts have acknowledged that an encryption key is not the same as a physical key, but it only takes a single Supreme Court decision to end that debate forever. And given the way the Supreme Court has been ruling in heavy favor of the everyone's-a-terrorist attitude of our government, it wouldn't surprise me if they ruled this constitutional under the 5th Amendment. However, I don't know of such case even hitting the appeal courts yet.

[Solid Knight]

They are going about this all wrong. You make him give you the codes through torture. It's faster than any super computer.

[TechFreak:)]

They are going about this all wrong. You make him give you the codes through torture. It's faster than any super computer.

It's against the law. Would you really like to live in a country where the police/FBI have a power to torture you?

[Sn00pY]

It's all about keyspace :)

[brentaal]

It's against the law. Would you really like to live in a country where the police/FBI have a power to torture you?

I'd love to live in Jack Bauer's world.

[Solid Knight]

It's against the law. Would you really like to live in a country where the police/FBI have a power to torture you?

They're wasting their time and costing too much money. They should just torture him.

[TechFreak:)]

Maybe this news is just a cover story and they have him locked up in some basement where they torture him.

[lexecutil]

My grandmother will love this, she's of the belief that the government can crack any encryption instantly.

Haha exactly the same with my grandfather.

[MS Bob 11]

Seriiously what was the other program?