(08-28-2012, 09:10 PM)the dark side Wrote: Indeed it is, it certainly Fires up my imagination, especially when you consider a lot of the art of cryptology was created during the dark days of the cold war, and with the advent of the computer internet coming in the 1980's, it makes you wonder how much of the encryption tech we use now is ex secret service...and how easy it may be for "the other side" to get the key...
its also amazing, almost scary even, at how easy most home encryptions, such as firewalls can be cracked, less than a week for a newbie, and how horrifically low the encryption levels must be at many western government institutions (only way to explain how that swein assange got all that data!)
an inspring feild for anyone with a "thriller writers" imagination for sure! its also great for seeing how the electronic communications that we all rely on know acutally work, how they can be manipulated, and how we can protect ourselves, by having counter-knowledge, against hackers and the ever growing threat of e-trolls.
If you're interested in being more secure in general, I recommend reading
this sheet from the NSA official website. There are some great tips in there that will keep away novices and impatient people. A determined hacker, though, can break into anything of course, so in general it's probably a good idea to avoid of keeping important information unencrypted on your harddrive.