Crack In Dual_EC_DRBG
(Conspiracy Nation, 11/19/07) – The Dual_EC_DRBG may have been cracked!! Suggestions of this have been revealed by Bruce Schneier at “Wired.” We “should worry about a new random-number standard that includes an algorithm that is slow, badly designed and just might contain a backdoor for the National Security Agency,” he writes. (“Did NSA Put a Secret Backdoor in New Encryption Standard?” http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2007/11/securitymatters_1115)
Commenting on the troubling situation, Paul McNamara adds that Dual_EC_DRBG only made it as one of the premier random number generators “because the National Security Agency insisted.” Why would NSA favor a “sub-prime”-type encryption standard? (“Did NSA leave itself an encryption back door?” http://www.networkworld.com/columnists/2007/111907-net-buzz.html)
Adding to the worries, Adi Shamir, described as “[one] of the world’s most prominent cryptographers,” warns that “a subtle math error” in computer chips “would make it possible for an attacker to break the protection afforded to some electronic messages by a popular technique known as public key cryptography.” (“Adding Math to List of Security Threats,” by John Markoff. New York Times, November 17, 2007)
Executing the attack would require only knowledge of the math flaw and the ability to send a "poisoned" encrypted message to a protected computer, comments “Zonk” (pseudonymn). (“Cryptography Expert Sounds Alarm At Possible Math Hack,” http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/19/0240210)
Numbers have consequences! It was Pythagoras of Samos who first discovered this, more than 2500 years ago. Pythagoras and his students believed that everything was related to mathematics and that numbers were the ultimate reality. (“Pythagoras,” Wikipedia, Nov. 19, 2007). In light of this, some other numerological markers are notable.
This Thursday, November 22, will be Thanksgiving Day. November 22nd also coincides with the 44th anniversary of the JFK assassination. The USA numerical signature is “11/22.” It will be the 44th anniversary of the JFK murder, and meanwhile presidential candidates now vie for the job of 44th USA president: Pythagoras, at least, might have seen this as some sort of “ultimate reality.” One web site, “Hillary Is 44” (http://www.hillaryis44.com/) promotes campaign donors adding 44 cents to their donations as a special signature.
Commercial flights are to be allowed into military air space, in a special gesture of benevolence from the U.S. government. This is ostensibly done to ease traffic congestion for holiday travelers. And maybe we can take that claim at face value. On the other hand, who knows? Is it possible to be too suspicious?
A constant drumbeat of “crisis” occurs, the latest being a U.N. “dire warning” on climate change. So-called “conspiracy theorists” have long spoken of the “problem-solution” scheme, where crises grease the skids for pre-planned “solutions.” They see, for example, the surreal events of September 11, 2001 (9/11) as pre-planned. Naomi Klein, interviewed yesterday on “Media Matters” via a local NPR affiliate, sees such perspectives as putting the cart before the horse. To her, the U.S. government is always in “acute mode,” waiting for crisis and ready to respond with “solutions” favoring the oligarchy. Her latest book, “The Shock Doctrine”, underscores the “problem-solution” scenario. Klein reportedly begins therein by discussing the CIA's manual of torture, the Kubark CounterIntelligence Interrogation handbook, describing the process, referred to by Naomi Klein as a shock, of regressing the prisoner down to a childhood state. This shock is used as a metaphor throughout the work for all crisis - natural disasters, wars, terrorist attacks - which, because of the psychological shock, allow opportunistic dramatical economical reforms, referred to as economical shocks.
But not only prisoners are being “regressed down to a childhood state.” The psychological effect of constant crisis-mongering tends to infantilize the general population as well. This Thursday, 11/22, 44th anniversary of the JFK assassination, Americans will be stuffed-full like turkeys and watching Sports-O-Plenty on the boob tube. Pythagoras might read the numbers as an “ultimate reality.” But of what? It need not be a “crisis” but could manifest as something apparently innocuous.
Conspiracy Nation
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