Ep. 16: NNPOCIYETR

I, V, M. Okay, he will be but at the same time he wouldn't be spectacularly popular as he is today. Like, lots of, you have your favorite artist, I have my favorite artist. All of them keep releasing good stuff which we enjoy, but it doesn't break the internet like how Thajar Shaddya is.

It's almost like his mediocrity is better than a little bit of superiority. I find that fascinating. There will be people who are doing 16 hours of rears for 27 days. No, nobody cares.

They will never train. That Malik Khurzhun guy who you like. He was so good and yet heard by so few people. So this whole so bad that it's good sort of space.

I mean, it's a fun internet phenomenon that's happening. You remember there was Rebecca Black and that horrible song of us called Friday. Yeah, by creating this abomination, this assault on the senses, this dismemberment of good taste, he was viral, something he couldn't have achieved otherwise. And I like this whole, it's so bad that it's good sort of phenomenon.

So it's so internet, right? Like a few years back there was Rebecca, Rebecca Black and Friday. And of course that masterpiece from your people. I have no idea what you're talking about.

We can change topic. Oh, don't expect it. You know very well what I'm talking about. Sillsilla, is it?

Stop. That's exactly how it goes. It is the second most embarrassing thing ever to come out of Kerala after Sree Chant. If you haven't seen it already, please go and type Sillsilla in YouTube.

It is awesome. But it's not as awesome. Like, yeah, it's the Irish. Yeah, so if you've already seen the Irish today, please don't sit, watch Sillsilla.

Like, there's only so much hammering in the brain. It's medically unsafe. It's like you can't take a paracetamol after coming from Thailand. That sort of thing.

All right, on that Sillsilla is connoteless. Take a little break. Yeah, I'm going to chuck it in the cover. I'm sort of like a little bit different from Sillsilla.

Yeah, yeah. We'll be right back. Are you looking for finance products and services that can enhance your personal finance experience? Are you looking for a space to talk about your financial product or service?

And are you looking for a Christ workshop where the conversation is all about money? Well, your search ends here. Hi, my name is Arubh Gauta and I'm post-order best-of-of-the-part cars. And I invite you for the conversation about your personal product for each Monday on the IBM podcast app or the website or any podcast streaming platforms.

See you folks. What's that? Very good. Not to mention the greatest followers from family groups.

We should just whip out a phone and read a couple. What do you say? That can be our profundity of the group. Absolutely.

So, okay, here's a gem that I picked up from my family group. Prayer is the most powerful weapon against trials. The most effective medicine against sickness and the most valuable gift to someone you love. Good morning.

That's wrong. The most powerful weapon against trials is a good lawyer. The most effective medicine against sickness is antibiotics. And the most valuable gift to someone you love is just cash or a gift for each other at best.

You should have responded to that fashion to you. No, so what I do is I take one of these forwards every day and I post it on Twitter. It's very characteristic of family groups. Extremely offended if you do any smart, like allocating your information.

The deep fucking is totally reached. Totally totally. He's totally that way. Yes, and the Hindi ones are probably trumping this.

So listen to this one that one of our mutual friends forwarded. You know who you are. Yeah, you know who you are. Okay.

Jeevan may saffaltha hasil karnake lee rosa na ek vadharth ke havashaktah uti hai. Wa hai? Ais kream. Ais e hotha hai hai.

Ais eotha hai. Ais eotha hai. Ais eotha hai. Sakaar apman dushti kon.

Ais eotha hai kriya shilapah. Ais eotha hai mahat wakangshah. Happy summer. I watch the happy summer in Bombay.

Here's one. Again, this is good morning because the worst possible way to start today. Good morning followed by alternating emojis of clover and sunflower problems, like washing machines. They twist us, spin us and knock us around.

But in the end, we come out cleaner, brighter and better than before. I don't think any of them. This trumps all my profundity instead of that. Go to profundity, over you.

Okay, so now that we're all enlightened, let's move on. This big news, all users of WhatsApp have recently received a message. The last time a billion people read the same thing together, it was the timing of the Virar fast from the other station platform on the 3. Alright, so the message is, messages you send to this chat and calls are now secured with end-to-end encryption.

Tap here for more info. Now the thing, Narain, is that sounds nice. You can't go wrong by using the word encryption. It sounds like something important, right?

Like you put the word in, nobody understands what it is, but yeah, I want encryption. You probably didn't miss it when you didn't know it was there, but the moment you say it's not there, people raise a fuss. I know, it's like when you go to a bar sometimes, when you're penal to the beer, you just give the booze, right? But I'm not so nice at all.

And sometimes the supply runs out and the waiters are just like, oh, yeah. And then some people are like, oh yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know. What bad luck I demand to speak to the manager. Like, all for something that you didn't know existed limited back.

It's like Wi-Fi in the airport. So anyway, what just happened? WhatsApp turned on encryption for all its users. What does encryption mean?

And what, I mean, why now, first of all, and why WhatsApp? Yeah, okay. So encryption, okay. It's a process of encoding messages in such a fashion that only the intended recipient sees it in its intended format.

That is basically what encryption is. Now, this doesn't stop someone from getting to the data unauthorized. They will just be like an extended student with an IITG guide purchased by the parents. I said they would have got this encrypted gibberish.

Or in my case, an IITG aspect with an IITG. So it's like they'll get this big pile of data and they won't know what to do with it. So, okay, the simplest thing of this is if I can send a message across to you just like that as is, and somebody could intercept it, then he could see exactly what I was sending out to you. Now, I want him to not do that.

So we work out a little secret code and then I send you what appears to be gibberish to the outside world. But you're smart because you've worked out a little key beforehand. So you can sort of decrypt it at your end. So that is in a very, very basic sense what encryption is.

So first of all, it is possible for, you know, because most of us don't realize that it is possible for messages to be intercepted. So I'm sending you a text message with some possibly very confidential, maybe business day, maybe pawns, can be our tiles is going to go through the roof by shares or something like that. And, you know, someone third party. Good, absolutely.

Before I run to my terminal and buy the shares, you would already bought it. Absolutely. Yeah. That could always happen.

You remember back in, when you were in classroom days, we always had secret codes for each other. Like A is equal to 7, B is equal to 6. And we always make all these little codes, we think it was a little thing. And then, you know, we did pass our notes around and even the teacher saw it.

She would just see something regular while we were able to secretly communicate with each other. So Krikita often uses messages, right? Yeah, yeah. So Krikita's messages.

Ballers and Wiccup keepers communicating. Like I've seen them doing this on the board one on the left side, board one on the other side. And the bassmen have no idea what he's doing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So that's an unencrypted message. Yeah. You know, you know, you know, it is. You know, it is.

Of course, there was one certain Krikita from my part of the world who used to towel sticking out of his pocket. And that wasn't a signal to the Wiccup keeper. Boom. My drop.

So how does this whole inscription thingy work? Surely it's more than just a clever key like in, you know, the giant thing games. Yeah. So it is.

So let's go back in time. Long before computers and electronics. There were, there was something called a skylail, a CYTLE, which was cylindrical objects on which you could write messages. Okay.

Like imagine, for example, you take a long strip of paper. Okay. And then you write, okay, I want to say I love you, Narind. Okay.

And I've written, I, I've written all vertically. And then what I do is imagine I'm winding it on a pen. I'm winding it on a pen. Okay.

So, okay. Actually what I do is I take the long strip of paper first and then I wind it on the pen. And then I write, I love you, Narind, you know, as one word after the other. Now when I take this trip out to anybody, it seems like a random gibberish because your eye will come first and then your end will come later.

So it reads very randomly. So he, if he intercepts the message, he'll be like, okay, I don't know what, what this is. But then if it goes to you, what you have is sort of cylinder of the same dimension. So then when you wrap it on, you can see.

So that is one of the earliest forms. How ancient would this be? 1600s or something like that? Wow.

Fascinating. Yeah. As far as I remember. So this is one of the oldest means of communication.

A lot of war messages was sent across like this. These messages taken out of the title would mean absolute nonsense to an interceptor. Yeah. Unless a message was written by an MBA.

In which case the nonsense was intentional. So they don't need to write it in something. I don't think an MBA would be able to fit all that he wanted to say in a single strip of paper. It's impossible.

Like a minimum word limit of 500 has to, that's a big problem. Yeah. Yeah. So a little bit about encryption without getting too technical because the topic for another day can get quite complicated.

Supposing that I wanted to send a file to you. It was a slightly confidential file. Something that would cause us both a fair bit of embarrassment if it would go outside the door. Yes.

The producer is looking absolutely shocking. I wonder what the hell we are talking about. He's clearly re-evaluating our relationship. Don't worry.

He's talking about a draft file. So simplify it on Google Docs. Quickly move on. What is this file you speak of?

No. I want to send it to you and only you. It's important that it goes to you. Unfortunately thanks to the working of the internet.

Somebody might intercept it. Like we have established time and time again. Oh, last five minutes. Now there's so much confidential information out there making sure nobody not TCS data is important.

Yeah. So I'm guessing encryption kicks in here. Yeah. So like I said, it's basically converting your data into what seems like gibberish, which is then decrypted at the intended recipient's computer.

Right. There are two types of encryption. One is called symmetric key. Now imagine Arin, the same file that I spoke about.

I'm trying not to imagine it. But yeah. I send it to you. But I encrypted using a code that is on my computer.

Okay. It's called a key. Now you also have this key. All right.

Just like good old school days. I have the code. You have the code. So when I can't send it to you, the mumbo jumbo is now decrypted at your end.

Now the problem here is I obviously need to get this key across to you as well. Right. So if I have to take that effort of sending the key to you. That's right.

Why do I need to just add a random extra step? So that whole process renders encryption as useful as a official online shared document in 2016. Unless it's made out of soft, absolutely. It's made out of my bill.

It's useful for some purposes. So your second type of key takes care of encryption? Yeah. Yeah.

So that is called asymmetric key encryption. Okay. It's a little complicated again. So I'm not going to get into it fully.

Each transfer has a public key and a private key involved and you need both in order to successfully send a file. So imagine Arin that I have a key. All right. Not a physical key, obviously.

Now this key is associated with a lock along with the key. That's a lock. Now this lock is a public key. Okay.

That's what I'm saying is getting a little complicated because it's a private key. That's a public key. The public key acts as a lock. Now what I do with this public key is I make it available to everybody.

Anybody who wants to contact me. I just want to be very much. Absolutely unnecessary. Okay.

So you take. So anyone has access to my public key. All right. Okay.

And you decide you want to send me a message. So you take my public key. Okay. And hey, even if hackers get it, it's okay.

It's absolutely okay. What happens is when you want to send me a message, you lock your message with my public key. And that is sent back to me. But only I have the power to open my lock.

If a hacker gets it, he doesn't have my private key. So he can't open it. So this way it's very secure. So it depends on the computer you're on.

Yeah, it depends on the computer that you're on. So it's a two stage process. Yeah. So that way it's a little longer than the first type of encryption, which is symmetric.

But obviously with all the computing power, etc. that we have, it doesn't take that long. It's widely used for interbased applications. For example, if you're ever, so that's basically, that's the type of encryption that we're using like, it's called asymmetric key encryption.

And all you need to know about it is pretty safe. On the other hand, the first type of encryption, which I talked about, the symmetric, that's not very safe because suppose for example, the hacker gets hold of the key, all right. He's able to crack not only this message, but any message that is stored on your computer and my computer. So it's, but at the same time, it's very fast.

So it's, so it's used only for say something like data storage or something like that, not for peer to peer or end to end transaction. And that's the term end to end that you would have seen in the WhatsApp message end to end encryption is now enabled on your WhatsApp. It means that, you know, we could share like, for example, if I were to send you my bank account details with a password or something, you know, things like that. Not I'm going to do that anytime soon, but yeah.

We'll make a difference to my life. Absolutely not. Yeah. So yeah, you could do that because I and only I will be able to read that unless of course my phone is stolen, which is a totally different one image we can't do anything about.

So anyway, it's a two-stage process. Like I said, so you know, when you go to some website, especially one set, taking your personal information like say a bank website or an e-commerce website, your HTTP will turn to HTTPS. Yeah, that is secure. That is secure.

Yeah, it stands for secure and something called SSL kicks in secure socket layer, all right, which means that encryption is on if that is if that kicks in basically HTTP HTTP turns to HTTPS, then you can just show that your data is not going to be misused. So no one can intercept and missus it. Nobody can intercept and this is very important, especially for banks where there's a lot of phishing that happens. B-H-I-S-I-S-H-I-H.

Okay. So basically this hacker can create a website that looks exactly like the HDFC bank website, exactly like the HDFC bank website somehow managed to get that across to you. Say, hey, something's wrong with your account. Can you and he can pose as a customer care executive or something and say, hey, sorry, this is something wrong.

Can you reset your password or something? And you're like, yeah, yeah, obviously I will. And you log in with that. So when you log in, you're given your password.

Now the hacker since you also website automatically has your data. So now he immediately goes to the real HDFC website uses your data and siphons of money. So it's always important whenever you're giving out your personal information to make sure that HTTP is there to HTTPS. It's a very exciting journey from here.

So just like in the movies, we're going to take an intermission over here. Secure little break. Secure little break. So you're looking for finance products and services that can enhance your personal finance experience.

Are you looking for a space to talk about your financial product or service? And are you looking for a Christ Rock show where the conversation is all about money? Well, your search ends here. Hi, my name is Arubak Gupta and I post other best of us at podcast and I invite you for the conversation about your personal products for each Monday on the IBM podcast app or the website or at any podcast streaming platforms.

See you folks. It feels like everyone's talking about two things right now. Pickleball and podcast. So what happens when someone who's lived her whole life on the court decides to bring those two worlds together?

I'm Sanya Mirza and I'm bringing you a brand new podcast, Serving It Up With Sanya. I've had some incredible conversations with friends, fellow athletes, artists and entrepreneurs. Each episode starts with a game of pickleball and once the rallies are done, the real job begins. Serving it up with Sanya, watch and listen on YouTube and wherever you get your favorite podcasts.

Alright, so we're back with some more encryption gun for you guys. Alright, so that's very well was HTTP turning to HTTPS and all that. So let's, I'm not going to spend too much more time on this. It's a little technical.

Yeah, it is a little technical and it can get a little geeky at times. But you know, this digital certificate business that I keep hearing about. So who issues that and how does that work? So there are certain bodies, certain agencies that...

Yeah, believe me now and then, it's not very often but you know you say that this certificate or not from a trusted source. So there are some trusted source like very sign and things like this. They give out these digital certificates which act as middlemen of sorts in order to give out these sort of examples a little later. But the thing about these keys is even if the hacker gets the private key, right?

So technically you might be asking just like in the first type of hacking suppose he would get my key. You got a public key? Yeah, you got a private key as well. Now the private key is actually a very, very large number which is actually a multiple of two prime numbers.

And we're talking very, very large prime numbers over here often running into hundreds of numbers. And here is hundreds of digits, hundreds of digits. And here, nothing is where your hero comes into play. It's an all-oiler function.

Very good. Yes, good all-oiler. So Phi, okay, sorry we have to use a mathematical equation over here. Phi of P into Q is equal to P minus 1 into Q minus 1.

This simple little equation is really what makes encryption happen. I have to do everything but can I explain it for you? Of course you did. Okay, by now most of the people should just take my word.

The second type of encryption is very, very, very secure. Okay, you might think if people could work out all the functions and all the evidence, it's time to be hackers in the first place. So anyway, even if they get to this very large number, okay, it will take them forever to figure out what the two prime numbers were. Okay, we're talking about...

So what you're saying is that number is unique. And it's made of two really nice numbers. And it's created as well. What is virtually impossible because you don't have to take all the prime numbers?

Yeah, so what happens is two very large prime numbers are taken at random. And both of these are like hundred and fifty digits each and they are multiplied. And they're multiplied. So then you get this one big as number which is the private key.

And now... And you can almost hear it. Who's your daddy? Who's your daddy now?

Fifty years I've waited for this. So you might think, yes, it's theoretically still possible. So even if it's a 500-digit product, you can still have a computer algorithm that's like, okay, one into, two into whatever. But the thing is practically at today's computer speeds, which are somewhere between three to six beta-flops, it would take millions of years to break even just one code.

So yeah, that's a lot of time. This kind of reminds me of the amount of computing needed to mine a bit coin. What do you spoke of? Yeah, you have been told that.

Yeah, previous episode plug. We need to improve the course. We should take lessons for the podcast. Yeah.

Okay, the interesting thing is also prime numbers, which used to be just a mathematical hobby. Okay, like a little... Yeah. It just used to be this quirky thing that mathematic...

I mean, people who are interested in maths, you should just follow. But now they finally have a use. And this is fascinating for me when I learned this. Prime numbers are the core of all encryption.

Wow, that's amazing. So we owe all the security around us to the humble prime number. It's not exactly humble. It's more like a 300-digit prime.

300-digit, 56 inches. What's the difference? And that force simplifies that template being charged for a sedition. More people lend up here.

No, not if we encrypt the podcast. That'd be awesome. Encrypted podcast. You need a private key to this.

Yeah, on general areas, it'll appear gibberish more than usual. Yeah, actually, it'll appear gibberish in any case. So it's a key to this idea. So anyway, enough about this primer.

This is supposed to be a primer. Let's actually deal with what's happening to WhatsApp right now. As a result of this encryption, the practical upshot for you guys is nobody can intercept your WhatsApp messages. Unless, of course, like I said, somebody has access to your phone itself.

WhatsApp own employees can't decrypt them either. The only person who can decrypt WhatsApp messages, voice or images is the receiver. So basically if the government asks WhatsApp for somebody message... No, they can't do a thing about it.

That's a big step. That's a big step. It's going to open up privacy versus security debate. Just like Apple or something.

Apple and the FBI. It's going to be an endless debate. And if there are pros and cons to encryption. But let's not get into that debate right now.

But personally, I think this could be a very smart move on WhatsApp spot. See, I think all the people in local brains were just using it to send those... They're like full messages. They're like, ah, yeah, encryption, go with that.

And they'll just move on. But it sends a huge message to the tech community, especially back in the US where WhatsApp is not used as much as... It's not as popular in the US as it is here. In fact, people don't say good morning to you.

One people don't say good morning to you. But they have other means of community. They're still very used to SMS. And it still surprises the United States Silicon Valley people that have WhatsApp is so popular.

They're like, where do this 1 billion number come from? And the truth of the matter is it's used in all these developing countries because it's come as a cheaper alternative to... And here's the thing, all right. When we think about encryption and all that, till the WhatsApp thing happened, we were all talking about Apple.

Apple makes a big deal about encryption. One with the whole FBI debate. All I message messages are encrypted. But then here's the thing.

There are only about 800 million iPhones that have been sold to date. Out of which, I don't know, maybe about 400 million are in our active right now. From the beginning. From the beginning.

And here's the thing, in one shot, 1 billion people who use WhatsApp have just got it just like that. It's been the cards for a while. They've been working on encryption for the last two years or something. Wow.

It took time because they didn't want to do it half-baked. They could have rolled it out in phases, but they didn't want that. They wanted everything to be encrypted. And here's the challenge that WhatsApp has.

See, when you're doing iPhone encryption or iPad encryption, the ecosystem is the same. The type of phones and devices that are largely consistent. WhatsApp is across platforms. Apple, iOS, Android, even Symbian.

And Android itself is so fragmented, the type of devices range from a low-end carbon all the way up to a high-end Sony or an HTC. And the additional challenge is a person using a high-end iPhone could be sending a message to a low-end, almost feature phone. And it could be text, voice, or audio, or video call. So the challenges...

All of that is encrypted. Everything's encrypted. And that's a challenge. All these computations for all phones, receiving from all types of phones, sending to all types of phones.

So they had a lot of work to do, and they finally managed to do it. So in the case of WhatsApp, how the whole encryption thing works is, in the middle, there's a WhatsApp server. Let's take the same delightful example of the video that I wanted to send you. Now, the server sends a public key to the sender, which is me.

The message is encrypted and it's sent to the WhatsApp server. So it's all jumbled up. You only can read this at this point in time. And then it is sent to the recipient's phone.

And it can be decrypted only by your phone. And nothing else because you have the private key, which is required to... So even WhatsApp server doesn't know. Even WhatsApp servers.

It just acts as a key. So if there is anything potentially incriminating or anything like that, even WhatsApp will happen. Even WhatsApp has no... They can't do anything.

And all this is happening obviously on the fly. So it's just head-over there. On the fly, everything is happening on the fly. And here's another interesting thing.

Groups, WhatsApp groups won't be encrypted, even if one of the users has not updated. So if you have a group of 50 people, and 49 of you guys are upgraded, but one laggard is over there. Then, yeah. So if any of you people are discussing seditious things in groups, then either upgrade the laggard, so kick them out of the group if you don't want the government snooping.

The actions to this? Well, mostly positive, obviously, from the general public, mostly positive because, hey, all security is good security. The Hindu had a fantastic line when he said, you may not feel it, but on April 5th, IIT post-doctoral level, Algebra started being applied to those pictures of your child spreading paint on the floor that your old schoolmates don't want to see, but are do polite to say. I would strongly suspect that Kishishoka is also on the fly.

Possibly. Most techies, of course, are welcome to this. And it's obviously going to spark off encryption demands for other companies as well. Security companies, on the other hand, were not really pleased.

The NSA, for example, said that the Paris attacks would have been stopped if it weren't for encryption. I checked the whole host of platforms to see whether they're encrypted. And the easy way of doing it is just say, is dash encrypted. If they are encrypted, they'll be making a huge, huge cry about this.

Otherwise, they'll just be saying some random shit like we have always supported security. Like, for example, Snapchat is, Snapchat is encrypted. Gmail is encrypted. Thankfully, some of the rubbish I sent back in 2004 should be encrypted even from me only.

LinkedIn is also encrypted. Strangely, though, Tinder isn't. Of all things. Of all things.

Imagine a hacker falling in love with a person whose message is he busted. It meant that Tinder. So I can't find a specific answer to whether Facebook is encrypted or not. So the company can technically still read your messages.

Any of the most people posting on Facebook just want more likes. Twitter, DMs are not end-to-end encrypted. Okay, that's scary. I'll go back and check all the nonsense I've dm'd all over the hill.

Anyway, that's what we have. A long discussion on encryption. And we are going to be right back with a couple of things after Tienz, even if we... It feels like everyone's talking about two things right now.

Pick a goal and podcast. So what happens when someone who's lived her whole life on the court decides to bring those two worlds together? I'm Sanya Mirza, and I'm bringing you a brand new podcast. Serving it up with Sanya.

I've had some incredible conversations with friends, fellow athletes, artists and entrepreneurs. Each episode starts with the game of Pickleball, and once the rallies are done, the real topic is. Serving it up with Sanya, watch and listen on YouTube and wherever you get your favorite podcasts. We have a section where we look at etymologies of words and places.

Encryption itself. Very simple. What does encryption mean? So, crypt means hidden place.

That's why it's a crypt to be in... Okay, that I don't know. We'll have to check that. I think crypts were graves that people had to keep their bones in because they believed that if your body was stolen, you would not have to have some sense.

That's interesting. That was a crypt thing. It's a person who makes crypts called a crypt writer. Okay, the place...

What are these days I want to stand with the heart? You're going to stand with the heart. What a lovely dark, just in Timberlake song. Crypt of your own.

Okay. The place that I want to do today is Bharat. Of course, you said many anti-national things on the show, so we need to make up for it. Bharat is of course named after the mythological emperor Bharat, which is actually Bharat, sorry, North Indian, South Indian, different showing, which by itself means chillished.

But is it... do you know anything more about it? No, everywhere I saw it was more or less... There are two Bharatas.

Okay, so Bharat is Ram's brother. Okay. And I thought Bharat was named after Ram's brother Bharat. Yeah, that's...

So, somebody was telling me there was another king Bharat. Yeah, the emperor. There's an emperor. So, it's probably your reader please Google and check.

Yeah. And tell us if you're optimal. You're smart, but we're not that smart. Yeah.

So, that's about it for this week. It's been a heavy topic again. And we started off with Thaia Rsha. We never thought we would actually end up having a serious episode after that.

I know. But the only way you can go is up from there. So, yeah, that's about it. Do not miss the comments on the YouTube page when you see...

Thaia Rsha. It's amazing. Take care, stay safe and see you soon. Bye-bye.