[sandworm101]

>> It is not recommended by anyone to depend on tor against that threat model.

That depends as much on the use case as the threat. Traffic analysis attacks require traffic. Short burst communication via tor (chat/email/bot control commands etc) are not traced as easily as large file downloads or random web browsing. Attacks on the client (malware) are also very hardware dependant. A target using the same Tor client on the same hardware regularly is a softer target than someone connecting randomly via a variety of devices.

The NSA (Or FSB/FBI/CIA et al) are not SHIELD. They operate in the realworld with realworld physics/math. If they did have reliable and simple backdoors into Tor we would have heard about them by now.

[kart23]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullrun_(decryption_program)

I think you may be underestimating them here, I don't doubt their ability to keep their capabilities secret.

[hpoe]

How you figure we would heard about it? I mean the only reason we know they can break RSA 50% of the time was because of Snownden and that was like 10 years ago or so.

I mean these people are really good at keeping things secret, I remember reading books written in the late 80's that still said the first use of computers was calculating artillery tables, not codebreaking.

[tialaramex]

> I mean the only reason we know they can break RSA 50% of the time was because of Snownden and that was like 10 years ago or so.

Edward Snowden's revelations were about seven years ago, and did not include anything about the NSA breaking RSA encryption or signatures 50% of the time or any other amount. Who knows where you got that from, but not Edward Snowden.

> I remember reading books written in the late 80's that still said the first use of computers was calculating artillery tables, not codebreaking.

That would be because it was true. The purpose of the Difference Engine and of early mechanical calculating machines that were actually built at the time was construction of tables.

Colossus (which was used for breaking Lorenz) is an early electronic computer, but certainly not the first such computer and it isn't a stored program computer (to change what Colossus does it's necessary to physically disassemble it) so it's not actually part of the lineage of stored program computers we use today.

The Ultra Secret was published in 1974 - after that point the fact that Colossus existed and everything else about war work at Bletchley was not a secret. So Ultra was kept secret for just over thirty years.

[remexre]

I thought that was, they can/could break HTTPS half the time, and that was the Logjam attack.