[114999] in North American Network Operators' Group
RE: Fiber cut - response in seconds?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Deepak Jain)
Tue Jun 2 15:20:58 2009
From: Deepak Jain <deepak@ai.net>
To: Charles Wyble <charles@thewybles.com>, "nanog@nanog.org" <nanog@nanog.org>
Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2009 15:20:38 -0400
In-Reply-To: <4A2570BB.9050203@thewybles.com>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
>=20
> Really? I don't think so. I imagine it would be much more dependent on
> the amount of computing power the attacker has access to. More
> encrypted
> blobs won't help. If that was the case then the various encryption
> schemes in wide use today would be cracked already. Bad guys can setup
> networks and blast data through it and have complete access. I don't
> see
> them cracking encryption.
Without getting into the math involved, Vlad (and others) are correct. This=
is why there is key migration (regeneration/renegotiation/repudiation) alo=
ng these multi-gigabit/multi-terabit streams.=20
Your obfuscation strength (I don't care how many digits you have in your ke=
y, your cipher, what have you) is computed against the amount of data you a=
re obfuscating. If I am obfuscating 1 byte of data, my math functions do no=
t need to be as large as obfuscating 2^128 bits.=20
There are plenty of non-classified books regarding COMSEC, INFOSEC and all =
their related interworking bits (even COMINT, SIGINT and HUMINT). Plenty of=
NANOG folks have been in these communities and that is why they say things=
that make sense regarding physical and network security. Even if you haven=
't been in these groups, the non-classified books are sufficiently sophisti=
cated as to give even a layperson a respect for the layers of security (and=
the discipline behind it) needed to provide even the most minimal level of=
protection.
The h4x0r kids who think magnets on their doorways, tin foil hats, or willy=
-nilly encryption using their email-exchanged PGP keys are protected are we=
lcome to their sandbox too -- let's just keep it away from those of us who =
like things that provably work [most of the time ;)].
DJ
