Comment by wilkystyle

1 day ago

go on...

There is some evidence that they have done it becore.

Specifically, that they had a backdoor for Dual EC DRBG[1], and pushed for a shorter key lenghth for DES, to intentionally weaken it.

It is, obviously, controversial. But I think there is certainly enough there that I wouldn't be confident that the NSA wouldn't recommend something they knew to be weak in some way, even to other government organizations.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_EC_DRBG

3DES...

  • What about it?

    • It was widely used, even in government and military. Who knows if they actually used the same as everyone else in actuality. I guess none of this is proven beyond doubt, given the nature of all this?!

          Reporting on declassified history says the NSA pushed for a shorter DES key; the compromise was 56 bits
      
          NSA and a suspected cryptographic backdoor: the Dual_EC_DRBG random-number generator was the subject of reporting about an NSA backdoor and an alleged payment to RSA. RSA denied knowingly weakening its products.
      
          TLS 1.0’s CBC chaining made IVs predictable and enabled the BEAST attack. That’s a documented protocol weakness, allegedly put in there by US state actors on purpose.
      

      YMMV but none of this would surprise any reasonable person given Snowden's revelations.

      9 replies →