The aim of cryptography is to ensure the confidentiality of communications, and the widespread use of the Internet has led to its increased application. Yet terrorists and other mafias have the same needs as governments and citizens. There is a flourishing legal arsenal in many states, and it is accompanied by techniques used to attack enciphered communications. Most people believe that cryptography provides them with security, but this article shows that this is not so.
Enciphered Communications: a Can of Worms?
It is perhaps a statement of the obvious, but information is the new sinew of war. Whoever gets the quickest access to the most reliable information has a definite advantage. The principal way of protecting information has forever lain in preventing an adversary from reading the content of messages. Thus one objective of cryptography (literally, secret writing) is to ensure the confidentiality of data.
In theory, at least, cryptographic algorithms seem fairly invulnerable, but the reality is somewhat different. Very often, transcription on a computer or an electronic chip greatly lowers the degree of security. The truth is that we do not actually know how to prove the level of security when implementing an algorithm. Many state or industrial organisations take no account of the realities of implementation, and assess security purely as a function of theoretical complexity. As a result, there is widespread overestimation of the security of information systems.
There are frequent arguments which rightly or wrongly call into question the level of security these crypto products are supposed to bring, but what is the real truth? This article aims to look at the issue more closely.
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