No doubt a strictly brute force attack on AES appears impossible, and *if* the archive was cold cracked it would either imply a weak password or a collision, side channel, weak/vulnerable implementation, backdoor... something, but clearly not brute forcing an entire key space let alone a 16 char keyspace. A weak password is one thing, but if we can assume the password was strong it then it would be a tell as to what is not still secure based on time.
At this point it is all speculation, so I suppose maybe this is more water cooler talk until some facts come out. However, from the best I can gather he was likely using TrueCrypt to encrypt the disks. I read this in an article about how the reporter's copy of the archive (on an external drive) was confiscated in Heathrow and was denying they had recovered anything from it. I think it would be safe to assume they were using cascading algorithms, which use different keys, so it makes it tough to imagine being cracked at all outside of implementation or backdoor.
Perhaps we'll get more details or perhaps not, and like Rolf mentioned, maybe they were not really cracked at all since there is no proof... it very well could just be disinformation being spread.
At this point it is all speculation, so I suppose maybe this is more water cooler talk until some facts come out. However, from the best I can gather he was likely using TrueCrypt to encrypt the disks. I read this in an article about how the reporter's copy of the archive (on an external drive) was confiscated in Heathrow and was denying they had recovered anything from it. I think it would be safe to assume they were using cascading algorithms, which use different keys, so it makes it tough to imagine being cracked at all outside of implementation or backdoor.
Perhaps we'll get more details or perhaps not, and like Rolf mentioned, maybe they were not really cracked at all since there is no proof... it very well could just be disinformation being spread.