I think you need a new tinfoil hat.

If the VPN traffic is encrypted properly, and they don't have access to either end point, how is it you propose they crack it? Magic?

If there is a vulnerability in the software, which that delightful OpenSSL bug provided (thank goodness I stuck with Debian 6 so long) then you have a point. But not even the NSA, as the article makes clear, has some means to break into a properly encrypted stream.

Largely because if the article, despite /.'s hysterical headline, states that well configured encryption systems remain secure. And how exactly is the NSA going to crack into my self-signed certs, with the CA sitting on a box with no connection to the Internet? Short of breaking into the location where the computer is, I'd say with reasonable certainty that the NSA cannot crack the certs that are used for my interoffice VPN. Now maybe the VPN software has a vulnerability, and that is always a a worry, but the actual implementation itself is as sound as I can imagine it being.

If the encryption is properly implemented, I'd say it is highly unlikely that they will crack it any time soon.

Properly configured systems with a well-implemented certificate infrastructure are very hard, if not outright impossible, to inject a MITM attack into.

Before we all get too hysterical, from the article itself:

The digitization of society in the past several decades has been accompanied by the broad deployment of cryptography, which is no longer the exclusive realm of secret agents. Whether a person is conducting online banking, Internet shopping or making a phone call, almost every Internet connection today is encrypted in some way. The entire realm of cloud computing -- that is of outsourcing computing tasks to data centers somewhere else, possibly even on the other side of the globe -- relies heavily on cryptographic security systems. Internet activists even hold crypto parties where they teach people who are interested in communicating securely and privately how to encrypt their data.

In other words, the NSA, GCHQ and other intelligence services are probably only able to crack badly configured or unpatched and badly out of date systems. That doesn't stop them from using out of band vulnerabilities like hacking into someone's PC or forcing some online service to open up the decrypted data, but it seems likely that if you have a well-managed cert chain and your systems are kept up to date and patched, the odds of anyone, government or otherwise, busting into your encrypted data seems pretty low.

My big fear out of all this isn't the unlikely hacking of mainstream encryption schemes, but rather that those that do use encryption may end up being targets of other methods; like malware, to get at their critical data.

It's got to be better than New Jersey.

Sorry, forgot to include the link

http://www.keyboardco.com/blog...

As a touch typist I am very particular with keyboard

I have been using keyboard equipped with Cherry key switches for decades and there are five different Cherry key switches ...

Red
Blue
Green
Brown
Black

All of them function differently. Some with 'clicks', some without. The 'tactile' feel is different as well

There is one site that I recommend --- no, not ad placement, I promise --- that gives you a brief description of the difference of the Cherry key switches

Hope this helps !

Ted, more likely a Libertarian, the Right's useful idiots.

And "righties" only know one tired stupid joke they keep saying over and over again.

"Lefty lefty lefty lefty." All... Fucking... Day... Long...

Because you can't check alternative media sources in the United States. No sirree, there's only one state broadcaster that plays nothing but pro-US government material all year long...

Fucking hell, you fucking moron. There's lots to condemn the US over, but I'd say it would be hard to think of a country with more diversity of voices, to the point of a loud braying cacophony.

The real highlight came with the "I'm gay" Eminem interview at the beginning. My hats off to Marshall Mathers.

The next 105 minutes was a bit of a let down.

It's North Korea. They spend half their time proclaiming how they're going to wipe out their enemies. They're media is in a constant state of hysteria.

That's utter BS. The UN released a report on human rights violations months before The Interview became a big issue. You should read it. The treatment of political prisoners (and christ, even unlucky bastards who happen to be distaff kin) is so harrowing that the only thing that really does come close was the Nazi death camps.