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At last, some of those who know more than most have publicly entered the fray regarding the establishment of governmental backdoors to encryption technologies. The New York Times published an article today which says:
An elite group of code makers and code breakers is taking American and British intelligence and law enforcement agencies to task in a new paper that evaluates government proposals to maintain special access to encrypted digital communications.
On Tuesday, the group — 13 of the world's pre-eminent cryptographers, computer scientists and security specialists — released the paper, which concludes there is no viable technical solution that would allow the American and British governments to gain "exceptional access" to encrypted communications without putting the world's most confidential data and critical infrastructure in danger. [...]
The authors of the report said such fears did not justify putting the world's digital communications at risk. Given the inherent vulnerabilities of the Internet, they argued, reducing encryption is not an option. Handing governments a key to encrypted communications would also require an extraordinary degree of trust.
One interesting issue they brought up relates to recent disturbing news:
With government agency breaches now the norm — most recently at the United States Office of Personnel Management, the State Department and the White House — the security specialists said authorities cannot be trusted to keep such keys safe from hackers and criminals.
Additional link of interest: the 34-page paper written by Harold Abelson, Ross Anderson, Steven M. Bellovin, Josh Benaloh, Matthew Blaze, Whitfield Diffie, John Gilmore, Matthew Green, Peter G. Neumann, Susan Landau, Ronald L. Rivest, Jeffrey I. Schiller, Bruce Schneier, Michael Specter, and Daniel J. Weitzner.
takyon: Security gurus deliver coup de grace to US govt's encryption backdoor demands
Original Submission
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 08 2015, @12:49PM
With official backdoors in place, I suppose I'll do my banking on paper again. More secure that way.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 08 2015, @12:58PM
That's a noble premise but they've shut down pretty much all physical bank departments in many parts of the world.
(Score: 4, Informative) by MrGuy on Wednesday July 08 2015, @01:33PM
Not registering for online access to your accounts is not a defense. Because "you" can apply for access to your accounts over the internet, as long as you know your account information and certain personal details that are in theory secret but in practice are known to many data brokers (and more thieves). So electing not to sign up for electronic access is actually a security risk, because thieves with the right data can sign up for access to your account online, and you'll never know. This is not a theoretical risk. [krebsonsecurity.com]
As long as your bank allows "you" to access your accounts electronically, you are NOT safe simply because you've never personally set up electronic access to them, and in fact might be LESS safe.
The future is here to stay.
(Score: 2) by WizardFusion on Wednesday July 08 2015, @02:24PM
Some banks may have an option to not disable internet access if you ask them.
(Score: 1) by hurwitz on Wednesday July 08 2015, @07:28PM
Is there any system for off-line, off-computer encryption/decryption? Via OCR + dedicated hardware? It's not ideal for my bank account numbers (and balances) to be a torn envelope away from being public; could my bank encrypt the statement with my public key and let me decrypt it in my living room?
It's not like this helps stop terrorists overseas; they already know not to use our Internet. Presumably this will create lots of jobs, like thousands of TSA agents staring at pixelated pictures of boobs.