What does the NSA think of academic cryptographers?

http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2059

by robinhouston • 12 years ago

229 34 12 years ago

The last two comments are interesting. I am sure someone here knows who wrote the NSA report from the information not redacted.

wxspll• 12 years ago

Agreed.

thret• 12 years ago

"My Hungarian-American wife Donna and I spent three weeks in the country [...]." - page 19 of the document.

mturmon2• 12 years ago

So funny to read, and with smart commentary by Aaronson about the divergence of interests between the NSA and the university crypto community.

I have pitched tech to the NSA before, and it seemed like they were more interested in benchmarking the capabilities of the outside world than in actually adopting the technology we were pitching.

phkahler• 12 years ago

> I have pitched tech to the NSA before, and it seemed like they were more interested in benchmarking the capabilities of the outside world than in actually adopting the technology we were pitching.

That should be step one. They should not be interested in what you were pitching without benchmarking first right?

mturmon2• 12 years ago

Yes, but benchmarking appeared to be step one of one total.

I kid! My quantum computation friends had much more success, for a while.

alex-g• 12 years ago

Yes, the commentary on the nationality of each author is definitely in the category of "benchmarking the capabilities of the outside world".

rrggrr2• 12 years ago

If leaked NSA budget figures are accurate the agency's annual budget is equal to the endowments of Harvard and Stanford combined. I'm therefore inclined to view academia as a farm team for NSA.

thecabinet• 12 years ago

Harvard's endowment is $36.4B: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_University

Stanford's endowment is $21.4B: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_University

NSA's budget is ~$11B: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency

The entire black budget is ~$53B: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/national/black-...

tptacek• 12 years ago

Interesting to do a where-are-they-now with the names here. Don Beaver, for instance --- the "charismatic preacher" --- is now a Sr. Software Engineer at Apple, after a 4-year stint at Google doing stuff like security for GFS.

pbsd• 12 years ago

Ueli Maurer continues to be one of the foremost theoretical cryptographers out there. He is responsible for the notion of indifferentiability, which has been quite useful in designing hashing modes out of block ciphers / compression functions and proving them 'secure'.

barrkel2• 12 years ago

FWIW, this is much more readable if the CSS justify rule is disabled.

frozenport2• 12 years ago

Not sure why you are being down-voted, as this is very much true. If you can't comment on CSS on HN, where can you?

maggit• 12 years ago

It is presumably being down-voted because it is off-topic; This is not a post about web design.

Sure, CSS is on-topic on HN, just like this article about cryptography is on-topic. However, commenting on the HTTPS certificate particulars of a site with a blog post about CSS would be similarly off-topic in a discussion about that blog post :)

(Personally, I am on the fence about the appropriateness of the comment, but I hope I have shed some light on why others would down-vote it)

danielnixon• 12 years ago

Related[0]:

"Many people with cognitive disabilities have a great deal of trouble with blocks of text that are justified (aligned to both the left and the right margins). The spaces between words create "rivers of white" running down the page, which can make the text difficult for some people to read. This failure describes situations where this confusing text layout occurs. The best way to avoid this problem is not to create text layout that is fully justified (aligned to both the left and the right margins)."

[0] http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/F88.html

gcp• 12 years ago

Interesting, though the readability problem from the original text has much to do with trying to justify text in a very small column, which means excessive spacing has to be used.

edwintorok• 12 years ago

You shouldn't turn on justification without also turning on hyphenation. If you add 'hyphens: auto' and '-moz-hyphens: auto' then it looks much better on Firefox. Chrome doesn't support hyphenation though...

D_Alex• 12 years ago

In dismissing the "philosophical" research into cryptography, the NSA writer makes the same error of judgement as the business leaders and politicians make in dismissing research into the fundamentals of, say, physics.

The most significant discoveries either come directly from or are built upon foundations of such research.

icegreentea• 12 years ago

A comment in a blog offers some potential context - namely that the wider crypto field had rediscovered differential cryptanalysis within the last few years. My understanding is that the public discovery of a previously NSA held technique is the type of stuff that the NSA writer was likely fixating on. Likely, the NSA writer attended the conference to get an idea of if the NSA would be losing another trump card.

It's also possible that the NSA writer may have already heard of all these theoretical debates before.

IvyMike• 12 years ago

Note that the conference happened in 1992.

Non-government cryptography has come a long way and become a lot more practical in the subsequent 22 years.

desdiv• 12 years ago

Minor nitpick: I think you meant "public cryptography" instead of "non-government cryptography".

Differential cryptanalysis was publicly unveiled in 1990; IBM first discovered it in 1974, but NSA came in and classified it.

pavelrub• 12 years ago

Differential cryptanalysis was known to the NSA before IBM "discovered" it.

voltagex_3• 12 years ago

From the "How to submit an article" section:

N.B. If the following instructions are a mystery to you and your local ADP support is no help, please feel free to call the CRYPTOLOG editor on 963-3123s.

Send a hard copy accompanied by a diskette (either 3.5" or 5.25") to the editor at P0541 in 2E062, Ops. 1, or send via e-mail to mebutle@p.nsa.

For maximum efficiency (as far as possible within the limits of your word processor):

• do not type your article in capital letters

• do not double-space between lines

• but do double-space between paragraphs

• do not indent for a new paragraph

• classify all paragraphs

• do not format an HD diskette as DD or vice-versa

• label your diskette: identify hardware (operating system: DOS or UNIX), density of medium, and word processor

• put your name, organization, building and phone number on the diskette

CRYPTOLOG is published in FrameMaker on a Sun HPW.

If you do not have access to FrameMaker, ASCII format is preferred

dsl• 12 years ago

If anyone is curious email addresses are divided up based on the directorate you are in. In this case the CRYPTOLOG editor (P02) is under the Analysis and Production Directorate.

Edit: if it isn't obvious, directorates and units under them are assigned letter and number designations so the organizational structure of the NSA isn't immediately obvious to outsiders (i.e. "I work in Q57" vs "I work in the polygraph office")

voltagex_3• 12 years ago

Where'd you get that info?

voltagex_3• 12 years ago

Surprisingly, there hasn't been much discussion of Cryptolog previously.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5407036

frozenport2• 12 years ago

Do you believe the culture has change din the last 20 years?

aet• 12 years ago

If you bring in an expert practitioner from any field and plop them down in an academic conference they will have similar notes.

What does the NSA think of academic cryptographers?

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