I realize that Star Wars is not trying to be even remotely realistic when it comes to depictions of warfare in space (or warfare on the ground, or warfare in general, really) but there are a number of things that appear in writing here (and in novels, and the movies, and so on) that occasionally crossover from being mildly annoying to tolerably bothersome.
I've touched on a couple of these broad topics in the past on this blog, specifically electronic warfare and scale. This time we're going to talk about encryption, slicing, and specifically reading other people's comms.
In lieu of launching into a description of something I don't understand terribly well myself, I'll just link an article here. The key point to be derived from it is just about at the bottom, referring to if 'military-grade' encryption has ever been hacked.
Short answer is 'no.'
Now you might give as a counter-argument that in the far-future (long time ago?) setting of Star Wars processing power has increased astronomically and so it wouldn't take a billion years to break a 256k key. I agree of course, but I also assume that the complexity of keys has also increased as a result, and the end result comes out to the same.
Now I tend to assume that communications in a combat environment will be decrypted as time passes. It's not really feasible, but it makes things a bit more interesting. I also assume that such messages will basically never be decrypted at a speed wherein it becomes tactically viable to respond. Basically you'll never be able to figure out a message burst quickly enough to respond to a maneuver based on said message. No, that comes down to the commander and normal tactics and intuition.
Similarly, assuming that any sort of key communications in a combat situation (basically anything besides basic pleasantries) are UN-encrypted is sort of passively insulting to the fictional military on the other side, as it would be the very height of incompetence to give out any sort of order that could easily be intercepted.
Now of course one could always hack in and obtain the key, right?
Well such systems are inevitably protected as well, and furthermore is such a thing is detected then there are procedures to change the key. These procedures (being all computerized these days) can be enacted very quickly. Thus the challenge for a slicer is to obtain the key for longer than a designated period (already unlikely because of storage procedures) and do so undetected.
Assuming that because you have a PC slicer they are able to automatically do such a thing quickly is tantamount to god-modding, in my opinion.
Of course Star Wars EU has a long history of slicers hacking into Imperial codes with distressing ease, and most comms chatter appears to be totally unencrypted in general, so it's hard to blame anybody for assuming that's simply how it works. Well here we are, at that odd intersection between the brilliant disregard for realism that is Star Wars (but hey midichlorians amirite) and the more grounded fiction that some writers prefer.
Talk with your opponent, I guess?
I've touched on a couple of these broad topics in the past on this blog, specifically electronic warfare and scale. This time we're going to talk about encryption, slicing, and specifically reading other people's comms.
In lieu of launching into a description of something I don't understand terribly well myself, I'll just link an article here. The key point to be derived from it is just about at the bottom, referring to if 'military-grade' encryption has ever been hacked.
Short answer is 'no.'
Now you might give as a counter-argument that in the far-future (long time ago?) setting of Star Wars processing power has increased astronomically and so it wouldn't take a billion years to break a 256k key. I agree of course, but I also assume that the complexity of keys has also increased as a result, and the end result comes out to the same.
Now I tend to assume that communications in a combat environment will be decrypted as time passes. It's not really feasible, but it makes things a bit more interesting. I also assume that such messages will basically never be decrypted at a speed wherein it becomes tactically viable to respond. Basically you'll never be able to figure out a message burst quickly enough to respond to a maneuver based on said message. No, that comes down to the commander and normal tactics and intuition.
Similarly, assuming that any sort of key communications in a combat situation (basically anything besides basic pleasantries) are UN-encrypted is sort of passively insulting to the fictional military on the other side, as it would be the very height of incompetence to give out any sort of order that could easily be intercepted.
Now of course one could always hack in and obtain the key, right?
Well such systems are inevitably protected as well, and furthermore is such a thing is detected then there are procedures to change the key. These procedures (being all computerized these days) can be enacted very quickly. Thus the challenge for a slicer is to obtain the key for longer than a designated period (already unlikely because of storage procedures) and do so undetected.
Assuming that because you have a PC slicer they are able to automatically do such a thing quickly is tantamount to god-modding, in my opinion.
Of course Star Wars EU has a long history of slicers hacking into Imperial codes with distressing ease, and most comms chatter appears to be totally unencrypted in general, so it's hard to blame anybody for assuming that's simply how it works. Well here we are, at that odd intersection between the brilliant disregard for realism that is Star Wars (but hey midichlorians amirite) and the more grounded fiction that some writers prefer.
Talk with your opponent, I guess?
