Chapter 3 Chapter 3

The only means of recovering its message is to enter the sender's "skeleton key," a series of codes that act much like a personal identification number for an ATM.Skeleton keys are usually long and complex, containing all the original information needed to describe the encryption algorithm system, in effect performing mathematical operations to reproduce the original information. Now users can send emails with confidence.Even if this transmission is intercepted, only the person who has the key can decipher it. The NSA recognized the predicament immediately.Instead of a surrogate cipher that can be cracked with just a pair of hands and graph paper, they are now dealing with a secret computer-generated function that uses chaos theory and multi-symbolic alphabets to scramble messages to make them readable. Go cluttered and simply impossible to crack.

First, the master key used by the user must be short, so that the NSA computer can "guess" it.If a passkey is the expected ten-digit number, the computer can be programmed to try every possibility between 0000000000 and 9999999999.Sooner or later, the computer will hit the correct sequence.This method of trial and error is called "brute force decryption".This approach may be time-consuming, but it is guaranteed in a mathematical sense. As the world learned the power of trial-and-guess, the skeleton key got longer and longer.The time it takes the computer to "guess" the correct sequence ranges from weeks to months to years.

By 1990, passkeys had surpassed the full 256 characters of the American Standard Code for Information Interchange, including letters, numbers, and symbols.The number between the different possibilities is about 10120, or 1 with 120 zeros after it.Correctly guessing a skeleton key is equivalent to finding the right grain of sand on a three-mile beach.Using trial and guesswork to crack a standard 64-bit master key, the NSA's fastest computer, Top Secret Gray/Joseph II, is estimated to take more than nineteen years. As a result of being caught in a virtual intelligence blockade, the NSA passed a secret directive issued by the President of the United States.Inspired by a combination of strong federal funding and the freedom to act “before it’s done” to tackle the problem, the NSA decided to start building something incredible — the world’s first A "universal decryption machine".

Although many engineers dismissed the possibility of building the newly proposed decryption computer, the NSA stuck to its own motto: Anything is possible; the impossible just takes more time. Five years, 50 million man-hours and $190 million, the NSA has once again proven their motto to be true.The last of the three million postage stamp-sized central processing units was hand-welded, the last programming was completed, and the ceramic shell was forged and sealed. Thus the "Transcript Machine" was born. The mysterious operation inside the TRANSLTR is the crystallization of many wisdoms. No one person can fully understand the truth, but the principle cannot be simpler: more people make things easier; three cobblers are worth one Zhuge Liang.

The three million central processing units would all be working in parallel - counting at dizzying speed, trying every permutation one by one, so that even the unimaginably large passkey would not escape Trickster's eyes .To guess the passkey and break the code, the multi-hundred-million-dollar masterpiece will use parallel processing as well as high-precision sorting methods in guessing plaintext communications.Its power comes not just from the mind-boggling number of central processing units, but also from groundbreaking new quantum computing methods -- just emerging that allow information to be stored in a quantum mechanical form rather than just as binary data. science and technology.

The exciting moment finally arrived. It was a rainy and windy morning on a Thursday in October.First field test.While there was uncertainty about how fast the machine would be, the engineers were in complete agreement on one thing—Transcript was powerful if the central processing units were all working in parallel.But how powerful they are, they still don't know. The answer will be available in twelve minutes.When the computer output and submitted the plaintext, that is, submitted the deciphered password, everyone present was stunned.TRANSLTR found a sixty-four-character passkey in a little over ten minutes, a million times faster than the fastest NSA computer twenty years ago!

Under the leadership of Deputy NSA Director Trevor J. Strathmore, Deputy Chief of TRANSLTR Construction Command, the NSA Production Division won.TRANSLTR was a huge success.In order to keep this secret, Deputy Director Strathmore immediately let the wind out, saying that the project had been declared a complete failure, and that all actions in the Ministry of Cryptography were aimed at recovering the tragic loss of 200 million U.S. dollars.Only the upper echelons of the NSA know the truth - TRANSLTR cracks hundreds of codes every day. Rumor has it that encrypted emails are completely unbreakable—not even by the all-powerful NSA.Then, good news came frequently.Drug lords, terrorists, and thieves alike, fed up with the constant bugging and interception of their phones, are turning to this new form of communication: encrypted e-mail that can reach anywhere in the world in an instant .No longer will they face a large jury listening to their own voices on tape recorders—the long-forgotten cell phone conversations captured by NSA satellites.

Intelligence gathering has never been easier.The passwords intercepted by the National Security Bureau were entered into the TRANSLTR machine as a completely unreadable password file, and within a few minutes, it became a completely readable plaintext file.There are no secrets in the world anymore. In order to convince the outside world of its incompetence in cracking e-mail passwords, the NSA vigorously lobbied legislators to reject all computer encryption software. It is also impossible to catch and prosecute perpetrators.Civil rights groups were elated, arguing that the NSA had no right to read people's letters in the first place.Encryption software publicity materials are overwhelming.The NSA "lost" the war -- that's exactly what they had in mind.Little did they know, the electronics community around the world was being fooled -- or so it seemed.

"Where's everyone?" Susan wondered as she walked across the floor of the Cryptography Department.Urgent task. While most NSA divisions are at full capacity seven days a week, the Cryptography Division is generally deserted on Saturdays.People who are good at using mathematics to crack codes are workaholics whose minds are overstretched, so there is an unwritten rule that they can have a day off on Saturday unless there is an urgent task.Codebreakers are the backbone of the NSA, so they must not be overworked and burnt out. Susan was walking on the floor, TRANSLTR looming over her right.The power plant for a computer eight floors down sounds eerie and ominous today.Susan never wanted to be in the Cryptography Department during her breaks, as if she were alone in a cage with a pretentious futuristic beast.Susan hurried to the deputy director's office.

Strathmore's glass-walled smart studio, perched high above a set of "flyover" stairs on the back wall of the Cryptography Department, has been judged by its appearance, especially when the curtains are drawn, Nicknamed it "Fishbowl".Susan climbed the barred stairs, looking up at the thick oak door of Strathmore's office.Here's where the Homeland Security Agency comes in - a vulture clutching an ancient skeleton key viciously.Inside that door sat one of the greatest men she had ever seen - Strathmore. Deputy Chief Strathmore, the fifty-six-year-old deputy chief of command, was like a father to Susan.He was the one who recruited Susan, and he was the one who made the NSA her home.When Susan was at the NSA over a dozen years ago, Strathmore was head of the Code Development Division, a training ground for incoming codebreakers -- incoming male codebreakers. .Strathmore never allowed his staff to tease any newcomers, and he was even more loving about the only female staff member.When he was accused of favoring Susan, he responded with facts: Susan Fletcher was the smartest young rookie he had ever met, and he would never lose her to sexual harassment.An old code-breaker decided to test whether Strathmore was what he said and what he said.

That was Susan's first year at the NSA.One morning Susan went to pick up written material in the Common Room of the Cryptography Division.As she was leaving, she noticed a picture of herself on the bulletin board.She was so embarrassed that she almost passed out.In the picture, she is lying lazily on the bed, wearing only tight shorts. It was later learned that a cryptographer had used a digital computer to scan a photo from a pornographic magazine, and then combined Susan's head with the photo's body.The photos are so lifelike that they can be faked. But out of consideration for Susan, Deputy Director Strathmore didn't think this trick was any fun at all.Two hours later, a note appeared, which read: Clerk Carl Austin was fired for misconduct. From that day on, no one provoked Susan anymore.Susan Frye became the apple of the eye of Deputy Commissioner Strathmore.Early in his career, Deputy Director Strathmore managed to attract the attention of his superiors by introducing some intelligence transactions through unusual channels.Trevor Strathmore has come to be known for his to the point and brevity of analysis.He seems to have an unusual ability to pay special attention to the moral dilemmas that the NSA faces when it is difficult to choose, and to always act in the public interest. In the eyes of everyone, there is no doubt that Strathmore loves his country very much.In the eyes of his colleagues, he is a patriot and an idealist - he is a gentleman in this hypocritical world.During the years that Susan had been at the NSA, Strathmore had risen from the director of the Code Breaking Division to the second-in-command of the entire NSA.Deputy Director Strathmore is now subordinated to only one person in the NSA--Director Leland Fontaine, the mysterious and never-seen ruler of this vast "labyrinth," Hearing his name occasionally is always awe-inspiring.He and Strathmore rarely met face to face, and when they did, it was like a collision of two giants.Fontaine is a giant of giants, but Strathmore doesn't seem to care.He had the restraint to argue with the director like an impassioned boxer, and not even the President of the United States dared to accuse him as Strathmore did.Those who do need to be politically immune - or, like Strathmore, politically apathetic. Susan climbed to the top of the stairs.Before Susan could knock on the door, the electronic door lock of Strathmore Studio had already buzzed.The door opened, and the deputy chief beckoned her in. "Thank you for coming, Susan. I owe you that." "You are too polite." She smiled and sat down across the table. Strathmore was long-limbed but heavily fleshed, and his taciturn nature somewhat belied his stubborn pursuit of perfection.His clear eyes always exude confidence and innate prudence.But today his eyes looked a little flustered and restless. "You look a little tired," said Susan. "I wasn't like this before," Strathmore said with a sigh. I'm about to say that, Susan thought. Susan had never seen Strathmore like this before.His thin gray hair looked disheveled, and in such a cool air-conditioned room, beads of sweat appeared on his forehead.He seemed to be lying in his clothes last night.He sat behind a modern desk with two recessed keypads and a computer monitor at one end.There are various computer printouts stacked on the table, and it looks like there is an unidentifiable driver's seat in this curtained studio. "Tired this week?" Susan asked. Strathmore shrugged and said, "It's still the same. The DXC is pestering citizens about privacy again." Susan smiled slightly.Dianxinhui, the full name of which is the Electronic New Field Foundation, is a global federation of computer users that has established a huge civil liberties association to support online freedom of speech and let people understand the real problems of living in the electronic world and risk factors.They lobbied everywhere, consistently against what they called the "Orwell of government agencies" Describes a future society dehumanized by ruthless rule. Orwellianism is derived from this book, which refers to the falsification and distortion of the truth for propaganda purposes.) Wiretapping capabilities” – specifically against the NSA.DXC has always been a thorn in Strathmore's side, a thorn in his flesh. "It seems to be the same as usual," Susan said. "So what's your urgent call to get me out of the bathtub?" Strathmore sat there, fingering the computer trackball fixed to the table.He was silent for a long time before realizing that Susan was staring at him, so he stared at her and asked, "Do you know the longest time it takes for TRANSLTR to decipher a password?" These words were completely out of Susan's expectations, and seemed meaningless.Is that what he called me for? "Hmm..." She pondered for a while and said, "A few months ago, we intercepted a communication message. We spent about an hour on this message, but the master key of this message is surprisingly long—about ten thousand bits." Strathmore grunted, "An hour? Whoa! How long would it take for a borderline code?" Susan shrugged: "Of course, if you include the diagnostic procedures, it will naturally be much longer." "How long will it be?" Susan wondered what Strathmore meant by asking this. "Let's put it this way, Director, in March, I tried to use a computer algorithm algorithm system on a segmented one-million-bit master key. Illegal loop functions, cellular automata, everything. As a result, Master Leak The machine still unlocked it." "How long did it take?" "Three hours." Strathmore frowned. "Three hours? That long?" Susan also frowned, slightly displeased.For the past three years, her job has been to fine-tune the world's most mysterious computer.Most of TRANSLTR's programs run so fast, thanks to her.A million-bit master key is simply unimaginable. "Okay," said Strathmore. "That is to say, it takes about three hours to reach the TRANSLTR for even the most difficult code?" Susan nodded and said, "Exactly, there is not much difference between up and down." Strathmore hesitated, as if afraid to say something he didn't want to say.Finally, he raised his head and said: "The opportunity of Universal Decryption has improved a little..." He stopped talking again. Susan asked, "More than three hours?" Strathmore nodded. Susan didn't look interested. "Encountered a new diagnostic? From System Security?" Strathmore shook his head and said, "It's an external file." Susan waited for him to say more, but he was silent again. "External files? You're kidding, right?" "I hope so. I delivered this file to TRANSLTR at around eleven-thirty last night, and it hasn't been deciphered yet." Susan opened her mouth in surprise.She looked at her watch, then at Strathmore, and asked, "Still deciphering? More than fifteen hours?" Strathmore stood up and turned the computer monitor to Sue. Shan.The screen is black, only a small yellow box flickers in the middle. Elapsed time: 15 hours 9 minutes 33 seconds Deciphering result: ----------------------- Susan's eyes widened in shock.This means that TRANSLTR took more than fifteen hours to crack a code.She knew that the computer's processing program checked thirty million characters per second, ten billion in an hour.If TRANSLTR is still calculating, it means that the passkey is indescribably large—more than a billion digits in length.This is really a fantasy. "That's impossible," she asserted. "Have you checked the error flags? Maybe there's a malfunction in the TRANSLTR algorithm, and . . . " "The machine is working fine." "That's why the master key is too big!" Strathmore shook his head and said, "It's a standard commercial rules system. I guess it's a sixty-four-bit master key." Susan was puzzled, and she looked at the TRANSLTR under the window.She knew that the machine could handle a sixty-four-bit master key in less than ten minutes. "There must be something wrong with it," Susan said. Strathmore nodded and said, "That's the point, but you don't like the oddity." Susan said with some concern: "Could it be that the TRANSLTR machine is malfunctioning?" "Everything is fine with TRANSLTR." "Have you encountered a virus?" Strathmore shook his head and said, "No virus. Listen to me." Susan was dumbfounded.TRANSLTR had never encountered a cipher that could not be broken within an hour.Often the ciphertext was sent to Strathmore's computer for printing within minutes.She glanced at the high-speed printer behind the desk, which was empty. "Susan," Strathmore said softly, "it may be hard to accept at first, but listen to it." He bit his tongue and continued: "This code that TRANSLTR is cracking—very rare, It's different from anything we've seen before." Strathmore paused, as if it was difficult to say: "This code can't be solved." Susan stared at him with wide eyes and almost laughed out loud.Can't solve it?What would that mean?There is no such thing as a code that cannot be broken--it just takes a long time, and every code can be broken.In a mathematical sense, TRANSLTR will find the correct answer sooner or later. "Can you say that again?" "This code can't be broken," he repeated vaguely. Can't solve it?Susan couldn't believe it was said by a man with twenty-seven years of experience in cryptanalysis. "Can't solve it, Director?" She asked unnaturally. "Ever tried Bergowski's Law?" Susan learned Bergowski's Law early in her career.This was the basis of the brute force technique and the inspiration for Strathmore's TRANSLTR.This law clearly states that if the computer tries all the possibilities, it will definitely find the correct answer in a mathematical sense.The password cannot be opened not because its master key cannot be found, but because most people don't have that much time or such good equipment to find it. Strathmore shook his head. "This password is an exception." "Exception?" Susan glanced at him disapprovingly.An unbreakable cipher is mathematically impossible!He knows it. Strathmore ran a hand through his sweaty hair and said, "This cipher is the product of an entirely new encryption procedure—we've never seen it before." When he said that, Susan was even more puzzled by Monk Zhang Er.Encryption programs are really just formulas, tricks for turning text into ciphers.Mathematicians and programmers create many new programs every day.There are hundreds of these things on the market-PGP encryption software, DiffieHellman encryption algorithm, compressed files, IDEA algorithm and ElGamal algorithm, and so on.TRANSLTR cracked these programs' codes every day without a problem.For TRANSLTR, all ciphers are the same, no matter which program was used to create them. "I still don't get it," Susan argued. "We're not talking about some complex function in reverse engineering, we're talking about brute force techniques. PGP encryption software, Lucifer algorithm, digital signature algorithm—it doesn't matter .” The program is to compile a master key that it thinks is safe, and the TRANSLTR machine has to crack the password until it finds out the answer. Strathmore replied with all the patience a good teacher could have had: "You're right, Susan. TRANSLTR will always unlock a passkey—even if it's monstrously large." After a pause, Then he added, "Unless..." Susan wanted to interject, but it was clear that Strathmore was about to say something explosive.Unless what? "Unless the computer doesn't know when it broke the code." Susan nearly fell off her chair. "what did you say?" "Unless the computer guesses the correct answer and just keeps guessing, because it doesn't know that it has found the correct answer." Strathmore said helplessly. "I think the program uses rotating plaintext." Susan was dumbfounded. The concept of rotating plaintext functionality was first proposed in 1987 by the Hungarian mathematician Josef Hahn in an obscure newspaper.Since a computer using brute force technology can break the code through the recognizable vocabulary pattern of the plaintext, Hahn proposed a new decryption program, which can not only set the encryption, but also convert the decrypted plaintext at different times. telegram.Theoretically, eternal shifts could allow the decryption computer to never find a recognizable pattern of words, so when it has found the exact answer, it never knows it itself.The idea is a bit like the idea of ​​colonizing Mars—understandable on an intellectual level, but far from humanly possible at the moment. "Where did you get this thing?" Susan demanded. The bureau chief replied slowly, "It was written by a programmer from a state-owned enterprise." "What?" Susan slumped back into the chair. "Our programmers downstairs are the best in the world! There are so many of us working together that we don't know how far we are from the function of rotating plaintext. Do you want to tell me that there is an ordinary person with a computer who can make this Something worked out?" Strathmore lowered his voice, apparently trying to calm her down. "I don't think the guy is a common man." Susan couldn't listen at all.She was sure there had to be something else: a glitch?Is it a virus?Nothing is more likely than the existence of an unbreakable cipher. Strathmore looked at Susan seriously and said, "The man who wrote this program is one of the best cryptographers who ever lived." Susan became more puzzled.The best cryptography experts in history are all in her own department of code-breaking, and if anyone came up with such a program, of course she knows best. "who is it?" "Surely you can guess," said Strathmore. "He didn't like the NSA very much." "Well, that narrows down the scope." Susan sarcastically sullenly said. "He was a part of TRANSLTR. He broke the rules and almost made a big mistake. I've got him out of here." Susan was expressionless, but her face quickly turned pale again. "Oh my God……" Strathmore nodded. "He's been bragging for a year that he's running a brute-force tech boycott process." "But, but..." Susan hesitated a bit. "I thought he was bluffing. Did he really figure it out?" "He did. He's the one who wrote this gigantic unbreakable code." Susan was silent for a long time. "But...that is to say..." Strathmore stared at her intently and said, "Exactly. It was Ensei Yuka who made TRANSLTR a pile of rubbish."