latest Snowden docs show NSA intercepts all Google and Yahoo DC-to-DC traffic

Mike Lyon mike.lyon at gmail.com
Sat Nov 2 02:35:22 UTC 2013


So the latter, PITA, reason then...

-Mike



> On Nov 1, 2013, at 19:32, Harry Hoffman <hhoffman at ip-solutions.net> wrote:
>
> So, I'm not sure if I'm being too simple-minded in my response. Please let me know if I am.
> The purpose of encrypting data is so others can't read your secrets.
> If you use a simple substitution cipher it's pretty easy to derive the set of substitution rules used.
> Stronger encryption algorithms employ more "difficult" math. Figuring out how to get from the ciphertext to the plaintext becomes a, computationally, difficult task.
> If your encryption algorithms are "good" *and* your source of random data is really random then the amount of time it takes to decrypt the data is so far out that it makes the data useless.
>
> Cheers,
> Harry
>
> Mike Lyon <mike.lyon at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> So even if Goog or Yahoo encrypt their data between DCs, what stops
>> the NSA from decrypting that data? Or would it be done simply to make
>> their lives a bit more of a PiTA to get the data they want?
>>
>> -Mike
>>
>>
>>
>>> On Nov 1, 2013, at 19:08, Harry Hoffman <hhoffman at ip-solutions.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> That's with a recommendation of using RC4.
>>> Head on over to the Wikipedia page for SSL/TLS and then decide if you want rc4 to be your preference when trying to defend against a adversary with the resources of a nation-state.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Harry
>>>
>>> Niels Bakker <niels=nanog at bakker.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> * mikal at stillhq.com (Michael Still) [Fri 01 Nov 2013, 05:27 CET]:
>>>>> Its about the CPU cost of the crypto. I was once told the number of
>>>>> CPUs required to do SSL on web search (which I have now forgotten)
>>>>> and it was a bigger number than you'd expect -- certainly hundreds.
>>>>
>>>> False: https://www.imperialviolet.org/2010/06/25/overclocking-ssl.html
>>>>
>>>> "On our production frontend machines, SSL/TLS accounts for less than
>>>> 1% of the CPU load, less than 10KB of memory per connection and less
>>>> than 2% of network overhead. Many people believe that SSL takes a lot
>>>> of CPU time and we hope the above numbers (public for the first time)
>>>> will help to dispel that."
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>   -- Niels.
>>>>




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