"I Write Mass Surveillance Software"
Michael Holstein
michael.holstein at csuohio.edu
Thu Sep 17 19:58:50 UTC 2009
> The IXP2800 can do line-rate 10gbps
> http://download.intel.com/design/network/ProdBrf/27905403.pdf
Here's one more link that explains the IXP series architecture
http://www.cs.uiuc.edu/homes/luddy/PROCESSORS/IXP2850.pdf
(basically, all the OP on Rededit was saying, was he's the guy that
writes the microengine code) .. the processors themselves aren't
capable of realtime brute-force decryption ... but they are the sort of
thing that can look for signatures/keywords/etc in a stream and act upon
it at wire-speed.
As for breaking encryption, this would be a task better suited for a
large farm of purpose-programmed FPGAs, since I'm not aware of any
commercially-produced ASIC that does this (although the NSA does list
jobs for "semiconductor fabrication", so I'm sure they're in that game).
IIRC the Russians had purpose-built their own ASICs to break DES when it
was en-vouge .. I'm sure our side of the pond actively does the same.
Sneakier mice, better mousetraps.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
while().
Cheers,
Michael Holstein
Cleveland State University
More information about the tor-talk
mailing list