[Beowulf] [tt] World's most powerful supercomputer goes online

[Kyle Spaans]

On 9/1/07, Robert G. Brown <rgb at phy.duke.edu> wrote:

> RSA and DES and MD5 are considered "probably uncrackable" by
> anyone with less than NSA-class resources, but of course this bot-cloud
> is several orders of magnitude more powerful than NSA's probable setup.

Why a "probable setup" ? I would agree that the NSA likely has a hefty
HPC sitting around somewhere - but why don't we know about it? If the
NSA goes through all the work of putting together a (not trying to
sound pessimistic/conspiracy theorist)
good-enough-to-crack-your-encryption-for-public-safety cluster, why
wouldn't they have it up on the top500 list? Not wanting to gloat? Not
wanting the "badguys to know what we've got"?

Or do they simply not have systems that are that impressive? :P