Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman - shame on you
These guys need to publicly apologize for what they have done.
Their last initials are RSA and the corporation that they founded - RSA - was known for excellent cryptography products.
Wait a minute -- from
Reuters:
Exclusive: Secret contract tied NSA and security industry pioneer
As a key part of a campaign to embed encryption software that it could crack into widely used computer products, the U.S. National Security Agency arranged a secret $10 million contract with RSA, one of the most influential firms in the computer security industry, Reuters has learned.
Documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden show that the NSA created and promulgated a flawed formula for generating random numbers to create a "back door" in encryption products, the New York Times reported in September. Reuters later reported that RSA became the most important distributor of that formula by rolling it into a software tool called Bsafe that is used to enhance security in personal computers and many other products.
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 the 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.
There are a lot of things that I would sell for $10 Million. Neither my ethics nor my soul are on the list.
RSA was later sold to EMC Corp -- their primary product is large disk arrays. They are very very good at this. I wonder if they will go after Rivest, Shamir and Adleman since their security product is now basically useless. Now that hackers know there is a back door, they will come looking for it. Also disturbing is that the current top Web security certificate company, VeriSign, was spun off from RSA -- does it have a back door as well? You might want to think about this before you make your next purchase from Amazon.
https:// anyone?
Posted by DaveH at December 20, 2013 10:52 PM