Backdoor dealings
Covertly weakening the security of the entire internet to make snooping easier is a bad idea
“PROPERLY implemented strong crypto systems are one of the few things that you can rely on,” declared Edward Snowden, the former computer technician at America’s National Security Agency (NSA) responsible for leaking a trove of documents about his erstwhile employer’s activities, in an online question-and-answer session in June. The latest revelations, published on September 5th by the Guardian, the New York Times and ProPublica, explain his careful choice of words. Many cryptographic systems in use on the internet, it seems, are not “properly implemented”, but have been weakened by flaws deliberately introduced by the NSA as part of a decade-long programme to ensure it can read encrypted traffic.
This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline “Backdoor dealings”
From the September 14th 2013 edition
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