The Cellar  

Go Back   The Cellar > Main > Politics

Politics Where we learn not to think less of others who don't share our views

 
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Prev Previous Post   Next Post Next
Old 12-21-2013, 11:54 PM   #31
Lamplighter
Person who doesn't update the user title
 
Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: Bottom lands of the Missoula floods
Posts: 6,402
It’s already in Wikipedia (here), and was reported as an "exclusive" by Reuters on 12/20/13,
but here is a shorter version:

Mother Jones
Kevin Drum
Dec. 21, 2013

NSA Paid Security Company to Adopt Weakened Encryption Standards
Quote:
Undisclosed until now was that RSA received $10 million in a deal that set
the NSA formula as the preferred, or default, method for number generation
in [ RSA Security LLC's ] BSafe software
, according to two sources familiar with the contract.

Although that sum might seem paltry, it represented more than a third of the revenue
that the relevant division at RSA had taken in during the entire previous year, securities filings show.

....Most of the dozen current and former RSA employees interviewed said that
the company erred in agreeing to such a contract, and many cited RSA's corporate evolution
away from pure cryptography products as one of the reasons it occurred.

But several said that RSA also was misled by government officials,
who portrayed the formula as a secure technological advance.
"They did not show their true hand," one person briefed on the deal said of the NSA,
asserting that government officials did not let on that they knew how to break the encryption.
However, the Wiki version speaks more along the lines that the "random number generator"
that was preferred by NSA was already well known among cryptologists as being one that could be broken
... and so leaves the impression that the RSA cryptologists knew, or should have known,
what was involved for the $10 million contract.

.
Lamplighter is offline   Reply With Quote
 

Tags
securitycouncilmonitored


Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests)
 
Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump

All times are GMT -5. The time now is 04:08 AM.


Powered by: vBulletin Version 3.8.1
Copyright ©2000 - 2025, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.