The game is afoot

[doodab]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/us...n.html?hp&_r=0

Where do we go with this then? Are some specific ciphers broken by design? Rather gives the lie to the "if it's open source everyone can check it and therefore you know it's secure" line doesn't it.

[OwlHoot]

Perhaps Bullrun has been a Manhatten-style mega project to develop practical quantum computers.

Amazing if true and they've succeeded, because several prominent physicists, including Nobel prize winner Gerard 't Hooft, are on record as having claimed these can never be made practical. Beyond a certain threshold they would suffer an unaccountable but inevitable "sudden death" or the quantum equivalent of a core dump.

[doodab]

Having read it, it sounds more like they've coerced a database of private keys out of all and sundry.

I always thought there was a nefarious reason that top down CA based PKI trust relationships were pushed so hard over the peer to peer model.