How Advanced Is the NSA’s Cryptanalysis — And Can We Resist It? | Bruce Schneier | Wired
▻http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/09/black-budget-what-exactly-are-the-nsas-cryptanalytic-capabilities
There’s a saying inside the NSA: “Cryptanalysis always gets better. It never gets worse.” It’s naive to assume that, in 2013, we have discovered all the mathematical breakthroughs in cryptography that can ever be discovered. There’s a lot more out there, and there will be for centuries. (...)
The NSA has a lot of people thinking about this problem full-time. According to the black budget summary, 35,000 people and $11 billion annually are part of the Department of Defense-wide Consolidated Cryptologic Program. Of that, 4 percent — or $440 million — goes to “Research and Technology.”
That’s an enormous amount of money; probably more than everyone else on the planet spends on cryptography research put together. I’m sure that results in a lot of interesting — and occasionally groundbreaking — cryptanalytic research results, maybe some of it even practical.
Still, I trust the mathematics.
