Comment by roncesvalles
10 days ago
It's not so much that there is a way to directly crack an encrypted file as much as there being backdoors in the entire HW and SW chain of you decrypting and accessing the encrypted file.
Short of you copying an encrypted file from the server onto a local trusted Linux distro (with no Intel ME on the machine), airgapping yourself, entering the decryption passphrase from a piece of paper (written by hand, never printed), with no cameras in the room, accessing what you need, and then securely wiping the machine without un-airgapping, you will most likely be tripping through several CIA-backdoored things.
Basically, the extreme level of digital OPSEC maintained by OBL is probably the bare minimum if your adversary is the state machinery of the United States or China.
This is a nation state in a state of perpetual tension, formal war and persistent attempts at sabotage by a notoriously paranoid and unscrupulous next-door enemy totalitarian/crime family state.
SK should have no shortage of motive or much trouble (it's an extremely wealthy country with a very well-funded, sophisticated government apparatus) implementing its own version of hardcore data security for backups.
Yeah, but also consider that maybe not every agency of South Korea needs this level of protection?