Ride the Lightning
Cybersecurity and Future of Law Practice Blog
by Sharon D. Nelson Esq., President of Sensei Enterprises, Inc.
Will the Feds Break Osama bin Laden's Encryption?
May 10, 2011
Maybe, maybe not. First, they will try to figure out what was used to encrypt. That will narrow the possibilities as they proceed. If they are lucky, they will find non-encrypted portions on the drives and will find part or all of the passphrase and/or information about the encryption used. We've had this kind of luck several times. It would be nice if they could find a confederate who knew the passphrase(s) and would give it/them up – that sure would make things simpler. It has been reported that some of the devices they found were used to carry communications. If that's true, the recipients will know the passphrase(s). Since we know that the couriers were followed, it may well be that the government will move against the known recipients.
Information Week had a really good article about this subject, featuring quotes from our friend, infosec expert Rob Lee.
A lot of conspiracy theorists believe that the government has back doors into many encryption schemes. John and I doubt that. It would be death to the company if a back door were revealed. There was a lot of hoo-ha over the government wanting a back door to PGP some years ago – as far as anyone knows, the government was sternly rebuffed and chastened in public by the press.
Assuming devices were powered off and encrypted using best practices, it will probably not be possible to recover the data using brute force methods, although they'll certainly try.
As John says when we lecture, "Encryption is a ballbuster."
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