Some of us — myself included — have proposed lawful government hacking as an alternative to backdoors. A new report from the Center of Internet and Society looks at the security risks of allowing government hacking. They include: Disincentive for vulnerability disclosure Cultivation of a market for surveillance tools Attackers co-opt hacking tools over which … Read More “Security Risks of Government Hacking” »
Category: backdoors
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The Five Eyes — the intelligence consortium of the rich English-speaking countries (the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand) — have issued a “Statement of Principles on Access to Evidence and Encryption” where they claim their needs for surveillance outweigh everyone’s needs for security and privacy. …the increasing use and sophistication of certain … Read More “Five-Eyes Intelligence Services Choose Surveillance Over Security” »
We don’t know if this is error or deliberate action, but five backdoors have been discovered already this year. Powered by WPeMatico
According to a new CSIS report, “going dark” is not the most pressing problem facing law enforcement in the age of digital data: Over the past year, we conducted a series of interviews with federal, state, and local law enforcement officials, attorneys, service providers, and civil society groups. We also commissioned a survey of law … Read More “New Report on Police Digital Forensics Techniques” »
The IEEE came out in favor of strong encryption: IEEE supports the use of unfettered strong encryption to protect confidentiality and integrity of data and communications. We oppose efforts by governments to restrict the use of strong encryption and/or to mandate exceptional access mechanisms such as “backdoors” or “key escrow schemes” in order to facilitate … Read More “IEEE Statement on Strong Encryption vs. Backdoors” »
Earlier this month, the Pentagon stopped selling phones made by the Chinese companies ZTE and Huawei on military bases because they might be used to spy on their users. It’s a legitimate fear, and perhaps a prudent action. But it’s just one instance of the much larger issue of securing our supply chains. All of … Read More “Supply-Chain Security” »
This article says that the Virginia Beach police are looking to buy encrypted radios. Virginia Beach police believe encryption will prevent criminals from listening to police communications. They said officer safety would increase and citizens would be better protected. Someone should ask them if they want those radios to have a backdoor. Powered by WPeMatico
Last month, Wired published a long article about Ray Ozzie and his supposed new scheme for adding a backdoor in encrypted devices. It’s a weird article. It paints Ozzie’s proposal as something that “attains the impossible” and “satisfies both law enforcement and privacy purists,” when (1) it’s barely a proposal, and (2) it’s essentially the … Read More “Ray Ozzie’s Encryption Backdoor” »
The ISO has rejected two symmetric encryption algorithms: SIMON and SPECK. These algorithms were both designed by the NSA and made public in 2013. They are optimized for small and low-cost processors like IoT devices. The risk of using NSA-designed ciphers, of course, is that they include NSA-designed backdoors. Personally, I doubt that they’re backdoored. … Read More “Two NSA Algorithms Rejected by the ISO” »
Russia has banned the secure messaging app Telegram. It’s making an absolute mess of the ban — blocking 16 million IP addresses, many belonging to the Amazon and Google clouds — and it’s not even clear that it’s working. But, more importantly, I’m not convinced Telegram is secure in the first place. Such a weird … Read More “Russia is Banning Telegram” »