CZ Podcast 86 — The NSA and the Snowden affair

Many of you asked for it, so in this episode we invited leading Czech cryptanalyst Tomáš Rosa. We chose a timely subject, how organizations such as the NSA operate in light of the Snowden affair. How far ahead might these agencies be, and in what areas? We also discussed public opinion and the reality we encounter in the media. We’d love your feedback on our official page.

Materials mentioned

Tempest

An article by one of the DES authors. Among other things, it shows that the NSA knew about differential cryptanalysis at least 15 years before the wider community discovered it. We didn’t get to this story in the discussion, but it’s a textbook example (see page 244, “…(NSA) also provided technical advice to IBM…”, “…After discussion with NSA, it was decided that…”). It deserves at least a mention.

There’s a good explanation here of the odd Dual_EC_DRBG pseudorandom number generator.

For anyone interested in quantum computing, here are links to some popular articles Tomáš and his colleagues wrote for CHIP in 2002 on the occasion of that famous factorization, 15 = 3 * 5.

• From Bits to Qubits (1)
• From Bits to Qubits (2)
• From Bits to Qubits (3)
• Quantum Computers: Hardware (1)
• Quantum Computers: Hardware (2)