Quote from: ztex on October 26, 2011, 10:02:49 AM

Quote from: gmaxwell on October 26, 2011, 01:06:57 AM

I expect the FPGA vendors could probably improve their sales by offering tools for other applications, just to increase customer confidence that the FPGAs are useful for things other than mining. DES reversing and WPA cracking are obvious things that come to mind. ...

GSM hacking and computation of rainbow tables are other cryptographic applications. But I will not implement ready-to-use solutions for this due to moral reasons (could help governments to tyrannize their people)

You are aware that keeping things secret only HELP governments. If the government wants to crack GSM it will crack GSM. They won't be buying your product to do so. They will be employing their own cryptographers.

Hiding things in secrecy only help governments. Information in the open levels the playing field. If GSM is cracked IN SECRET then nobody knows and the govt can spy without public knowledge. If GSM is cracked IN PUBLIC then the public is at least aware of the danger and hopefully public pressure pushes for superior algorithm which can't be cracked. This may in fact defeat a govt program which has already cracked GSM by bringing public attention to the vulnerability.

An example would be WEP. WEP was horribly flawed. It would have provided no resistance to any govt program. However the wifi industry claimed it was secure. Hell it is the Wired Equivelency Protocol. It is as secure as a wireline. Had it not been broken publicly and so spectacularly to make it the laughing stock of the industry and public WPA may never have been developed.

If you want to protect citizens from governments then make information free (free as in free speech not free beer).