Cracking Secret Data Stolen from Extremists: Story Idea?

[Astronomical_Wildcat]

Ugh... I'm honestly nervous about the credibility of this idea, but it's something I've been playing around with for a while and I want to see if it's decent enough to even be considered good.

So the novel is about three people who are trying to decrypt a flash drive that one of them stole from political extremists.

They story starts when three people move into a tiny spaceship in order to relocate to Ganymede. They all have different reasons for moving there.
But their problems begin once they are a little ways into their journey. One of the three is unable to shake off the effects of their shady past and as a result the HPL (Human Privilege Liberation), an xenophobic extremist organization, has found out about their whereabouts and are trying to kill them. And anyone who may be associated with them.
As it turns out, they had stolen a flash drive from one of the organization members, which contains pieces of confidential data.
As all three try to put their own problems aside and work together to crack the flash drive and stay alive, everything they are familiar with begins to unravel. The animosity between humans and aliens is getting worse, and what they remember about the Twenty One Year War may have had a much different side to it.
They must connect the dots between their war-filled pasts, the world around them, and the flash drive before everything goes to hell in a handbasket.

There's a lot of emphasis on the characters' pasts and how it affects the way they perceive the world around them and such.

So...uh, any criticism?

[Purple]

I'd read it. But that's about all I can say as really you've given us a sales pitch but no meat.

[The Romulan Republic]

I can't say how plausible it would be for them to crack the data without more information on the technology and skills of the people involved.

I would appreciate some more information on the Twenty One Year War and the extremist group, both for that reason and out of simple curiosity. But I can understand not wanting to give away too much information.

That said, based on what I see here, I'd consider reading it.

[biostem]

I'm assuming that one or multiple members of the group that stole the drive have the necessary skills and tech to actually go about cracking its encryption? I know it's an oft-used trope, but it kind of annoys me when people are depicted as having all these high tech skills, even when they're portrayed as either some random civilian, or some petty criminal/street urchin type.

[The Romulan Republic]

As far as criticism is concerned, I'd say that if you're making a story that focuses primarily on three isolated characters, then obviously you're going to have to make sure that those characters are capable of engaging the readers. In fact, that should, arguably, be a bigger priority than the plausibility of the plot.

As far as plausibility is concerned, what matters most is simply keeping everything in your writing clear and consistent.

Edits: Also, I cannot overstate the value of subtlety. A lot of new/amateur writers (but also some professionals) have a tendency to take things way over the top, into the real of melodrama and/or heavy-handed commentary, and it always tends to make it feel less "real" to me.

Although I'll concede this may be straying a bit off the original topic.

[Astronomical_Wildcat]

I can't say how plausible it would be for them to crack the data without more information on the technology and skills of the people involved.

I would appreciate some more information on the Twenty One Year War and the extremist group, both for that reason and out of simple curiosity. But I can understand not wanting to give away too much information.

That said, based on what I see here, I'd consider reading it.

One of the people hacks things for a living,and another used to be a part of the HPL, so at the very least they have some sort of idea of what could happen.
In addition to having hacking skills, her parents developed technology for the war.

The Twenty One Year War was a massive fallout between humans and aliens after a century of attempted peace. The destruction was massive on both sides, needless to say. Bombings and terrorist attacks on both sides were commonplace, not to mention people would randomly "disappear" as well.

The HPL and the GRA were formed shortly before the ending of the war, mostly out of spite of the casualties from both sides. Both sides seek retribution for what happened during that time, even if it means full scale destruction.
Neither side has done much, mostly xenophobic protests.

[Sea Skimmer]

The odds of encryption being breakable at all a century from now, let alone by a one man team of limited resources, would be zero in any realistic terms. So if you want 'plausible' that's out the window, but against that is the fact that its just basically a staple of sci fi that code breaking continues to be possible.

Meanwhile interesting characters for this story to have any point, but you're setting this up for two of the three to be functionally useless for the plot goal. 'Worked for other side' and 'generalized tech background' don't mean anything for serious cryptanalysis.

I would suggest three people trying to make sense of fragments of data they already have and engaging in research to interpret said fragments to deduce the enemy plan would be a better way to approach this. It would spare the need to wait hours and weeks for computers to do nothing interesting, and provide ample chances to elaborate on the story background.

[Adam Reynolds]

One point about modern encryption is that while it is virtually impossible to crack cryptographically, it is still somewhat easy to defeat security in general. Something akin to Heartbleed* would be a reasonably good flaw to use for Sea Skimmer's idea. It would also allow plenty of drama as characters could realize they have insufficient data and decide to do something about it by obtaining it through some other means that would give them an interesting final conflict as they decided to really find out what is happening rather than reading between the lines based on what limited data they have.

* For a solid simple explanation, see XKCD.