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Re: latest Snowden docs show NSA intercepts all Google and Yahoo DC-to-DC traffic


From: Mike Lyon <mike.lyon () gmail com>
Date: Fri, 1 Nov 2013 19:18:59 -0700

So even if Goog or Yahoo encrypt their data between DCs, what stops
the NSA from decrypting that data? Or would it be done simply to make
their lives a bit more of a PiTA to get the data they want?

-Mike



On Nov 1, 2013, at 19:08, Harry Hoffman <hhoffman () ip-solutions net> wrote:

That's with a recommendation of using RC4.
Head on over to the Wikipedia page for SSL/TLS and then decide if you want rc4 to be your preference when trying to 
defend against a adversary with the resources of a nation-state.

Cheers,
Harry

Niels Bakker <niels=nanog () bakker net> wrote:

* mikal () stillhq com (Michael Still) [Fri 01 Nov 2013, 05:27 CET]:
Its about the CPU cost of the crypto. I was once told the number of
CPUs required to do SSL on web search (which I have now forgotten)
and it was a bigger number than you'd expect -- certainly hundreds.

False: https://www.imperialviolet.org/2010/06/25/overclocking-ssl.html

"On our production frontend machines, SSL/TLS accounts for less than
1% of the CPU load, less than 10KB of memory per connection and less
than 2% of network overhead. Many people believe that SSL takes a lot
of CPU time and we hope the above numbers (public for the first time)
will help to dispel that."


   -- Niels.



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