At 03:54 PM 30/11/2011, Winterlight wrote:
Last weekend I was watching a American Greed on CNBC. It was about a hacker with a CS degree and a IT job, in the bay area who was stealing credit card numbers. The FBI eventually caught him but what was interesting was when he was interviewed in prison he said the FBI broke in through his front door and arrested him. He thought he had, in his words, three bricks for computers, because they were encrypted. He thought that all the FBI had gotten was three useless bricks. Apparently, the FBI encryption lab was able to decrypt the computers. He never said what kind of encryption, but a hacker with a undergraduate degree in CS would know how to use strong encryption. I did not think such a thing was possible
He might have used weak passwords. The good criminals don't actually get caught (and these guys do exist), so I'm thinking that since he was caught, he probably isn't as clever as he thinks he is.
Or maybe Truecrypt isn't as secure as Gibson likes to say. :) I seem to recall an episode where he claimed you could create an encrypted Truecrypt volume, then drop another encrypted volume inside of it that would be invisible unless you knew it was there. Thinking about this, I find that hard to believe, so I'll have to look that up again.
T
