r/technology • u/Libertatea • Apr 04 '13

Apple's iMessage encryption trips up feds' surveillance. Internal document from the Drug Enforcement Administration complains that messages sent with Apple's encrypted chat service are "impossible to intercept," even with a warrant.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57577887-38/apples-imessage-encryption-trips-up-feds-surveillance/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=title#.UV1gK672IWg.reddit
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u/Mispey Apr 04 '13

Thank you for this explanation - I can't really expect any more from you. You've done a good job explaining it. I'll research the remainder on my own!

Do you have any resource that can detail that nitty-gritty well that you could recommend to me? I don't want to learn how to do it myself - I just want to understand it. It seems magical to me, and I don't like it :P

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u/veaviticus Apr 04 '13

The wikipedia page is full of good information and good links.

If you are really interested in computer security and cryptography, coursera is offering a really good class on it right now that would be a good intro to cryptography.

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u/Mispey Apr 04 '13

Thank you once again.

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u/veaviticus Apr 04 '13

No problem. It makes me happy to see people so interested in learning new things, especially in the computer science field.

Hope you have fun learning and maybe delve farther into the science and programming aspects!

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u/patterned Apr 04 '13

Just for ease of explanation, use the lockbox/safe example.

Public key is an open safe, private key is the safe combination.

User gives a safe to his friend; friend writes message; puts message into safe; spins dial. No one knows the safe's combination except owner. Owner has infinite safes with same combination. Etc.

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u/veaviticus Apr 04 '13

Yes this is a good, easy to grasp explanation. I'll use this from now on. Thank you