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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22 2017, @05:00PM (1 child)
[citation needed]
No really, I'd wager that if stuff like this was there in a readily disassembleable kernel the kind folks at the RBN would've found and abused it by now. By saying that M$ can hide something in plain sight so well you're actually calling them competent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22 2017, @05:19PM
It was reported years ago that some M$ web traffic can be sent without triggering the modem lights or even show up in wireshark.