An international group of cryptography experts has forced the U.S. National Security Agency to back down over two data encryption techniques it wanted set as global industry standards, reflecting deep mistrust among close U.S. allies.
In interviews and emails seen by Reuters, academic and industry experts from countries including Germany, Japan and Israel worried that the U.S. electronic spy agency was pushing the new techniques not because they were good encryption tools, but because it knew how to break them.
The NSA has now agreed to drop all but the most powerful versions of the techniques - those least likely to be vulnerable to hacks - to address the concerns.
Have the chickens come home to roost for the NSA, or should we distrust the report that they backed down?
(Score: 3, Informative) by http on Friday September 22 2017, @03:35PM
The BULLRUN program administrators at the NSA would beg to differ with you. They devised at least one cryptographic routine with a backdoor (the one in Dual_EC_DRBG is moderately obscure, but "obvious" if you're a crypto-wonk like Bruce Schneier), and have been known to stack the standards board in charge of reviewing candidate cryptographic routines.
I browse at -1 when I have mod points. It's unsettling.