asciilifeform: mats: and what do you suppose it was for, if not dual_ec ?
asciilifeform: oh and mats, forgot to ask: why have you forgotten about the massive (iirc, 10-20 mil) usg bribe to rsa?
asciilifeform: and that whatever else we conclude, the fella who wrote hearbleed doesn't get to say 'oops. i promise i won't do it again. now let me write some more critical code'
asciilifeform: when ever man and woman who ever worked at nsa dies under torture and doesn't say anything about dual_ec - then i might believe 'mistake'
asciilifeform: hell, we don't even have 1% of the kgb archive.
asciilifeform: if the paperwork is missing - it isn't like we have all the usg archives on display!
asciilifeform: mats: if you have philosophical objections to 'behave as if X even if possibly ~X is true' then try to come up with some other syllogism. but it -must- end in 'the people who gave us heartbleed and dual_ec DO NOT GET TO MAKE CRYPTO ANY MORE'
asciilifeform: mats: let's put another example. if you are found holding a smoking pistol, with $famouspolitican in a bloody heap on the floor where he was not long ago giving a speech - do you suppose the judge would believe that you drew the pistol and pulled the trigger by accident, while reaching for another object in your pocket ?
asciilifeform: yes, some crypto designers make mistake, they are good people, sure, whatever. i will borrow from slavoj žižek and say then 'we put them to a good wall, shoot them with a good bullet from a good gun, and bury them in with a good shove in the good earth' - since sure, they are good people.
asciilifeform: every intelligence service on the planet has own jargon word for these
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu uses word 'asset' for both, but they are distinct animals
asciilifeform: which is to say, folks who are acting in the interests of usg but do not consciously know it
asciilifeform: and aside from stooges and people, there also exist useful idiots
asciilifeform: there is literally nothing else (other than a certain measure of 'guilt by association')
asciilifeform: all you have to go on, when answering the question 'usg stooge or not' is - 'by their fruits you will know them'
asciilifeform: it has to do with the impossibility of knowing intent
asciilifeform: thing is, there are not so many good opportunities for crafted vulns, and the usg folks know it. hence they try to cultivate an overall maggoty flavour in software culture at large
asciilifeform: this is a fairly outlandish thing on the surface, and i will justify it with something like 'pascal's wager'
asciilifeform: mats: at the risk of repeating myself, i will phrase my position as a kind of maxim: 'it is necessary to behave as if hearbleed and dual_ec were crafted vulns, regardless of any apparent evidence to the contrary'
asciilifeform: but if you have the upbringing of a thinking (that is, polymathic) person - you can get somewhere.
asciilifeform: unfortunately, for most of the folks who do this, it ends in a belief in unidentified flying proctologists
asciilifeform: once you amputate your vestigial 'this can't be true' organ, you are left with only your understanding of the physical world to go on
asciilifeform: enough for anyone, i'd think, at this point
asciilifeform: justification coming out of our ears, arses
asciilifeform: nearly everything i and fellow paranoiac crackpots have ever spoken about crypto has proven to be abundantly justified.
asciilifeform: but the available evidence is very, very thin.
asciilifeform: now, afaik all available evidence suggests that american cryptological establishment is occupied mainly with crafting monstrosities like dual_ec_drbg - rather than actually breaking 'real' crypto
asciilifeform: or is he waiting for you to come closer?
asciilifeform: there has yet to be ONE SINGLE cryptologist leak.
asciilifeform: at least the ones from whom there are leaks.
asciilifeform: then again, these people have long ago crossed the parody horizon.
asciilifeform: in the sense that if you kidnapped a generic american undergrad, chained him in a cellar, and didn't let him out until he reads the snowden dumps and craps out a deck of 'plausible' canadian slides, the result is likely to be something like the above.
