Cryptography: How the NSA weakened cryptographic standards on purpose
Cryptography: How the NSA weakened cryptographic standards on purpose (03:25)
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Welcome to lesson three, topic three: cryptography: how the NSA weakened cryptograpic standards on purpose. Cryptographics seems like a difficult word right? It actually has nothing to with cryptocurrency, but it has everything to do with encrypting digital products like software and operating systems. To quote Wikipedia: “Cryptography, or cryptology, is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of third parties called adversaries. More generally, cryptography is about constructing and analyzing protocols that prevent third parties or the public from reading private messages; various aspects in information security such as data confidentiality, data integrity, authentication, and non-repudiation are central to modern cryptography.”
Intelligence agencies worldwide are in a true digital war when it comes cryptography. At one hand they’d protect all their own internal communications, so that outside sources cannot break into their communication. But on the other hand, there is a surveillance state being built in which the privacy of citizens is being attacked. The last thing they want is for the people to have privacy. This is where some other revelations by Edward Snowden come in. Because he showed that the NSA , the National Security Agency of America, is weakening cryptographic standards on purpose. They even intercepted devices that where ment for export, to build in eavesdropping hardware. Other revelations by Snowden showed how the NSA was hacking companies too. So to be clear: next to protecting the people, governments have big stake in the game when it comes widely used security for hard- and software having vulnerability’s.
An ironic example of this purposely weakening of cryptographic standards dates from 2015. A few American academia hacked the website of the NSA, in which they made use of a vulnerability in the encryption. That vulnerability was applied by the NSA itself a few years earlier, but was meant to be used for software that would be exported to foreign countries. Funny right? The difficult thing about encryption is that you have to close all your doors to keep attackers outside, while the attackers only have to find one door that has a vulnerability. So encryption is not a on/off switch, it’s an ongoing process of keeping potential threats outside.
The best privacy friendly encrypted software should always be open source. Why? If I show you how I managed to secure all the doors in my house, which doors and windows I use, which locks I use, and you still can’t come in? That means I did a pretty good job. And it encourages good-willed people to find vulnerability’s, so these can be made secure again. Another thing it does, is making that everyone can see what happens with your data within that application. The big tech companies and surveillance agencies make it look like there is no choice or alternative. That using technology will always be invading to your privacy. Let’s not fall for that one. See you in the next one.
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