----- Forwarded message from "Perry E. Metzger" ----- Date: Fri, 6 Sep 2013 10:25:17 -0400 From: "Perry E. Metzger" To: Jerry Leichter Cc: cryptography@metzdowd.com Subject: [Cryptography] Sabotaged hardware (was Re: Opening Discussion: Speculation on "BULLRUN") X-Mailer: Claws Mail 3.9.0 (GTK+ 2.24.20; x86_64-apple-darwin12.4.0) On Thu, 5 Sep 2013 22:31:50 -0400 Jerry Leichter wrote:

For example, at http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/09/05/us/documents-reveal-nsa-campaign-against-encryption.html?ref=us&pagewanted=all, the following goal appears for FY 2013 appears: "Complete enabling for [redacted] encryption chips used in Virtual Public Network and Web encryption devices". The Times adds the following note: "Large Internet companies use dedicated hardware to scramble traffic before it is sent. In 2013, the agency planned to be able to decode traffic that was encoded by one of these two encryption chips, either by working with the manufacturers of the chips to insert back doors or by exploiting a security flaw in the chips' design."

This is troubling. It implies that there are widely used crypto accelerators in use at large organizations that intentionally harm the security of users. Random number generator flaws would seem like an obvious possibility here. This is especially disturbing because other actors can now start doing teardowns on a wide variety of such devices looking to find the flaws so they can themselves attack the traffic in question. Perry -- Perry E. Metzger perry@piermont.com _______________________________________________ The cryptography mailing list cryptography@metzdowd.com http://www.metzdowd.com/mailman/listinfo/cryptography ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5