Schneier often has great insight but this blog post was pretty much the opposite of that. I <i>think</i> I recall reading the original post from the guy who found that NYU info; and I def. read the Intercept piece.<p>Schneier's post quotes the original article and says unfortunately we don't know more. Literally over 50% of it is a quote from another article which he derides for it's lack of substance. Not sure what the point is.
> Whatever the details, this is exactly the sort of thing the NSA should be spending their money. Breaking the cryptography used by other nations is squarely in the NSA's mission.<p>I can't tell if it's sarcasm. (it's a serious question)
"Unfortunately, the Intercept decided not to publish most of the document, so all of those people with "a Ph.D. in a related field" can't read and understand WindsorGreen's capabilities. What sorts of key lengths can the machine brute force? Is it optimized for symmetric or asymmetric cryptanalysis? Random brute force or dictionary attacks? We have no idea."<p>When I was reading the news article, I thought to myself, should they really be publishing classified information? The dumb leak was one thing, but publishing it more broadly is a whole different thing. If this was a government contract, I would assume these are classified documents (which they are). Obviously we tax payers should have the right to know, but logically, wouldn't that consider a crime just like leaking to Wiki Leaks?