Encryption

[keewee]

Not sure this is the right thread for this but here goes anyway....

I saw this article on Zerohedge (http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-09-05/bullrun-nsas-infatuation-back-door-penetration). The phrase that stood out for me was "What happened next is unclear, but it is safe to say the NSA can now hack virtually everything but the highest (512+ bit: assume AES-256 is now terminally violated) cipher with impunity."

I sense a degree of fear-mongering to the article but was wondering how accurate it is and if it has any bearing on the security of the Bitcoin network?

[torba]

Better article: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/05/nsa-gchq-encryption-codes-security

If they mentioned the SHA family I'd get scared, but they probably can break lame to moderate cryptography that some developer shittily put together using widely known techniques. They probably have a huge brute forcing server farm.