Subject: Re: Transparency in Specifications and PRISM-class attacks

From: [email-masked] (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Fri, 20 Sep 2013 12:02:11 -0400 (EDT)

> From: Steve Crocker <[email-masked]>

    > Are we conflating back doors in implementations with back doors in
    > protocol specifications?

Good point, but I was thinking specifically of protocol specs, since that's
what the IETF turns out.

    > It's certainly a conceptual possibility for there to be a back door in a
    > protocol specification, but I don't recall ever hearing about one.

Well, here's one I was just reading about this morning:

  Last week, the New York Times reported that Snowden's cache of documents
  from his time working for an NSA contractor showed that the [NSA] used its
  public participation in the process for setting voluntary cryptography
  standards, run by the government's National Institute of Standards and
  Technology, to push for a formula that it knew it could break.

  NIST, which accepted the NSA proposal in 2006 as one of four systems
  acceptable for government use

    http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/20/us-usa-security-snowden-rsa-idUSBRE98J02Z20130920

(The irony here is that NSA, which is supposed to ensure the security of
government communications, deliberately pushed a weakened system as "one of
four systems acceptable for government use" - probably because they worked out
that what's they'd lose by its use in a few cases non-critical cases [no doubt
they wouldn't OK its use in really crucial systems] was outweighed by what
they might gain from outside use.)

     Noel

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From: todd <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 20 Sep 2013 09:27:12 -0700

The only back door necessary is the BGP4 route flap and private 
transport networks do the rest.

Todd

-- 
Todd S. Glassey
Personal Disclaimers Apply