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KWSN Orbiting Fortress
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LanDroid
Prince
Joined: 11 Jun 2002
Posts: 4476
Location: Cincinnati, OH U.S.
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 Posted: Sat Nov 21, 2009 7:36 pm Post subject: Potential new Boinc project? |
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| Quote: | Federal officials have put the PS3 to work breaking passwords on computer equipment confiscated from suspected child pornographers. according to a story released on the Scripps Howard Foundation wire. ...The unorthodox console approach has been so effective that agents are scouring eBay to find the best deal on another 40 consoles to round out their collection.
"Bad guys are encrypting their stuff now, so we need a methodology of hacking on that to try to break passwords," Claude E. Davenport, an agent in the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Cyber Crimes Center, told the Scripps reporter. "The Playstation 3 - its processing component - is perfect for large-scale library attacks."
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/111909-federal-government-using-ps3-to.html
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Killerrabbit
Major Oblivion
Joined: 23 May 2002
Posts: 4656
Location: in a rabbit hole near you!!
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| Posted: Sun Nov 22, 2009 2:02 am Post subject: |
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But would we working for the Feds cracking our own passwords?
Ni
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mohrorless
Mail Order Goat Bride
Joined: 09 Oct 2006
Posts: 11206
Location: NYC
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| Posted: Tue Nov 24, 2009 1:41 pm Post subject: |
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Everyone knows that every password will fall eventually. It's all a matter of how much brute force processing they hit it with.
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Nuadormrac
Prince
Joined: 13 Sep 2009
Posts: 506
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| Posted: Tue Nov 24, 2009 10:39 pm Post subject: |
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Well there does come the point where the complexity of the encryption scheme would require more computational power then is available for the foreseeable future, which then leaves other methods outside brute force useful. Things such as a dictionary attack, getting to know the person and infiltrate their lives, to try to guess what password people might create, etc. From there, try various combinations based on that. Sorta has a brute force element, but not without something to narrow the search down.
TBH, the feds clout on this (and I'm not saying child pornographers aren't bad people, they are); however doesn't hold without question, especially when. For instance, since the patriot act was instituted, the number of abuses:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/03/fbi-tried-to-co/
| Quote: | FBI headquarters officials sought to cover their informal and possibly illegal acquisition of phone records on thousands of Americans from 2003 to 2005 by issuing 11 improper, retroactive “blanket” administrative subpoenas in 2006 to three phone companies that are under contract to the FBI, according to an audit released Thursday.
Top officials at the FBI’s counter-terrorism division signed the blanket subpoenas “retroactively to justify the FBI’s acquisition of data through the exigent letters or or other informal requests,” the Justice Department’s Inspector General Glenn Fine found.
The revelations come in a follow-up report to Fine’s 2007 finding that the FBI abused a key Patriot Act power, known as a National Security Letter. That first reports showed that FBI agents were routinely sloppy in using the self-issued subpoenas and issued hundreds that claimed fake emergencies.
...The letters are related to still-secret contracts the FBI’s Communication Analysis Unit has with AT&T, Verizon and MCI. The contracts pay the companies to store subscribers’ phone records for longer periods of time and to provide faster service for FBI subpoenas. Those contracts began in May 2003, but the FBI refuses to release them.
At least one of the letters was signed by an assistant director and none were cleared with the FBI’s general counsel.
...Additionally, some of those retroactive NSLs sought records that the FBI was not authorized to obtain, and failed to explain — as required by policy — what investigation the records pertained to. Fine found that all were “issued in violation of internal FBI policy.”
In his 2007 report on the FBI’s use of that Patriot Act power during 2003 to 2005, Fine disclosed that officials at the counter-terrorism division had issued more than 700 emergency requests for data to telephone companies — so-called exigent letters — most with false promises that a court order was in the works and would be delivered after the fact. Those letters prompted a further investigation of those letters, including a reported criminal probe of counter-terrorism officials, and Thursday’s report says an in depth report on that office is forthcoming. |
as just one example. It's a less known fact then Richard Nixon got impeached, that not all of the articles of impeachment against him were related to Watergate. One article was concerning his abuse of the IRS tax auditing power, in an attempt to audit political enemies as a way to "get at them". Nixon resigned, and the rest was history.
In any case, given the propensity to the above, I'm rather iffy whenever I hear "trust us, it'll only be bad people..." mentioned. So as to my own CPU, eh, dunno about this one.
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Sir Papa Smurph
Cries like a little girl
Joined: 18 Jul 2006
Posts: 4430
Location: Michigan
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| Posted: Wed Nov 25, 2009 7:40 pm Post subject: |
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I agree with you Nuadormrac. I love my country but I fear my Government, no matter who's in power, the bureaucrats stay the same and they are often concerned with what benefits them not the country....
I am uncomfortable with this behavior of the Federal Government.
Child pornographers now, Then Who? (insert category you despise ) Here, Here & Here.... ( Now insert category YOU fit into ) Here....
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and a Really Hoopy Frood who always knows where his Towel is...
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