Tag Archive for: backdoors

World’s top cryptographers on encryption backdoors: No way

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Backdoors to break into encrypted communications are a bad idea from a confidentiality point of view, but Congress needs to act to decide how to balance that with the needs of law enforcement to catch terrorists and major criminals, some of the world’s top cryptographers told the RSA Conference 2016.

“The question is, where do you put the line?” says Adi Shamir, the “S” in RSA and a professor at Weizmann Institute of Technology.

The discussion came during the annual Cryptographer’s Panel at the conference during which the group discussed Apple’s fighting of a court order to remove security features from an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino terrorists.

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Network World Tim Greene

Bill filed in Congress would ban encryption backdoors

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Four Congressmen are proposing that states be forbidden to ask manufacturers to install encryption backdoors on their products outfitted with the technology.

U.S. Rep. Ted Lieu

U.S. Rep. Ted Lieu

The four filed a short bill this week that would deny states or parts of states from seeking alterations to products for the purpose of enabling surveillance of the user. It would also block them from seeking the ability to decrypt information that is otherwise unintelligible. The representatives filing the bill are Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Texas), Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.) and Mike Bishop (R-Mich.).

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Network World Tim Greene

Schneier: terrorists will switch to more secure alternatives to avoid encryption backdoors

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A study shows that if the U.S. mandates backdoors to decrypt secret messages in order to help law enforcement, there would still be hundreds of alternative encryption products made outside the reach of U.S. law that terrorists and criminals could get their hands on.

“Smart criminals and terrorists will easily be able to switch to more secure alternatives,” is the conclusion drawn by the study “A Worldwide Survey of Encryption Products”. The authors were Internet security authority Bruce Schneier of Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, independent security researcher Kathleen Seidel, and Saranya Vijayakumar, a Harvard student.

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Network World Tim Greene