The Year in NSA
Rather than trying to rank the NSA revelations on any sort of scale, we’ve put together an admittedly simplified list of some of the more interesting NSA-related stories to emerge in 2013.
Cryptography
RSA Denies NSA Backdoor Payment Allegations
The report that the NSA paid RSA Security $10 million in 2004 to implement a compromised random-number generator as the default in one of its key products–has shaken the security community and sent shockwaves through the industry that may be felt for years to come.
Researchers Find Way to Extract 4096-Bit RSA Key via Sound
Scientists have proved that they can extract a 4096-bit RSA key from a laptop using an acoustic side-channel attack that enables them to record the noise coming from the laptop during decryption, using a smartphone placed nearby. The attack can be used to reveal a large RSA key in less than an hour.
The NSA surveillance scandal has created ripples all across the Internet, and the latest one is a new effort from the IETF to change the way that encryption is used in a variety of critical application protocols, including HTTP and SMTP.
FreeBSD, the open-source operating system, announced that it will no longer support Intel’s RdRand and Via Technology’s Padlock on-chip random number generators (RNGs) moving forward in new versions of the UNIX-like operating system.
Open WhisperSystems announced that its TextSecure protocol has been integrated into the CyanogenMod SMS app, bringing end-to-end encrypted text messaging to 10 million Android users.
How is the NSA beating or breaking SSL? Cryptographer Matthew Green lays out a number of possibilities.
Twitter announced that it has implemented Perfect Forward Secrecy for Twitter.com as well as its API and mobile sites.
Microsoft is planning to roll out a new encrypted email service on its Office 365 site that will make sending and receiving secure email much simpler.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) released its Encrypt the Web Report demonstrating how much encryption leading Internet companies and service providers are deploying.
