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Why Security Backdoors are Bad (2016)

101 points by CM30 10y ago

CM30 10y ago
Or in other words, an article I wrote a while back explaining (to complete idiots) why a security backdoor is a bad idea in general. Why no, you can't 'have an encryption hole just for police/authorities to use'. Perhaps a few politicians may even reconsider their attitudes towards encryption and security in general. Eh, probably not.
- panzer_wyrm 10y ago
  Iphones have built in security backdoor called trust apple code signing. That is the foundation of their walled garden. So far Apple seem to protect it pretty well. They show that only the good guys can control the backdoor argument is not without merit.
  - Retric 10y ago
    For one system, over a few years when few people are trying to break in sure. But, the history of those trusted systems is terrible overall. Look at video game consoles for example and it's not just one or two that but all the major companies that tried generally several times each. EX: https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2012/10/25/sony-ps3-hacked-for-good-master-keys-revealed/ https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2012/10/25/sony-ps3-hacked-... And no the US government has not done much better.
    - panzer_wyrm 10y ago
      I do not support the walled garden, mandatory code signing from anybody but the owner and so on. People should control their devices. I just point that apple show that keeping keys really works. I don't think that console jailbreaks are from leaked keys (except ps3) but from normal exploits.
      - Retric 10y ago
        There has been several different leaked keys for different systems. Remember, Blue Ray had the same issue five different times in 06, 08, 09, 11, and 12. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controvers... Also, maintaining back doors would be a significantly harder problem than just keeping keys on a server used to sign things. Apple can for example keep the keys on an offline private server, but that's not really viable if 10 or 100's of thousands of people across multiple agency's of state, local, and federal law enforcement need access to break into things. Worse you could quickly find nobody outside the US would be willing to use our software or services.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - CM30 10y ago
      Another example along those lines is the NES Classic Mini. Doesn't connect to the internet, doesn't let you write anything to the console and doesn't come with anything like games to buy or extra storage mediums to use. Yet within weeks, people had hacked it wide open and stuck hundreds of ROMs on it.
  - marcosdumay 10y ago
    > So far Apple seem to protect it pretty well. That we know of. It's also important to remember that the only public trial against that backdoor was only for show, and despite not officially breaking it, the attacker got everything on the phone anyway.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- corpMaverick 10y ago
  Politians should be the first to worry about privacy. 1 - They are not guaranteed to always be in power. 2 - They will be the first to be targeted. 3 - They have the most to lose. I just don't understand why they don't care about it.
  - 3131s 10y ago
    And we should worry about our politician's security too. What if they are blackmailed while in power? That creates a terrible national security situation. This line of argument would hopefully resonate with the constituencies of the politicians pushing hardest for these backdoors (although it's a fairly bipartisan effort).
    - pbhjpbhj 10y ago
      With backdoors, which I'm not advocating for incidentally, the TLAs know they're being blackmailed and can intervene. Without that access politicians can still be blackmailed but it's harder for the TLAs to know about it.
      - 3131s 10y ago
        Is that necessarily true? With a scheme like key escrow, is there a sure-fire way to detect a hacker as opposed to an authorized user accessing data? At the very least it seems that if the NSA itself or some other agency were hacked (again) then this problem would still exist. The NSA has notably lacked this type of audit trail in their systems before, hence their inability to track Snowden.
  - white-flame 10y ago
    Congress was absolutely aghast when they found out they were being spied on by the three letter agencies, whenever they met with foreign representatives. But they don't care at all when it's applied to the general public, because they assume they'll have clout or connections to keep that at bay. I've never heard anything come out of that above kerfuffle, presumably because there was some backroom dealing done to ensure it's not a problem for them specifically.
sosodaft 10y ago
I shortened it from a three minute read to a one-second one: Someone will find it.
- AnimalMuppet 10y ago
  And publish it. And then everyone will have it.
fivestar 10y ago
Also, don't think about this tech just in the first world, but in the most corrupt, Third World hellhole where human rights are routinely violated and ask yourself why would we sentence brave people to even more misery and suffering?
DarkKomunalec 10y ago
I've said it before and I'll say it again: too much focus is being put on how backdoors can be abused, and too little on why mandating them is a terrible idea in general. If we decide we don't have the right to conceal our digital correspondence from the government, what else should we not be allowed to conceal? The conversations you have in your car? In your home? Besides the right to privacy, what other rights make fighting terrorism harder? Freedom of association and movement? Freedom of speech, which is regularly used for recruitment? Finally, if they really want someone's data, in a covert way, they're already able to plant hardware keyloggers, or spy on someone as they enter a password, etc. But it all requires manpower. What backdoors would let them do is monitor encrypted communications covertly and in bulk. To build up a database of all your chats and forum posts, and mine it for any anti-current-politics sentiment.
- type0 10y ago
  > If we decide we don't have the right to conceal our digital correspondence from the government, what else should we not be allowed to conceal? The conversations you have in your car? In your home? Let's say the Government decides that it has a zero tolerance for domestic violence, it goes ahead and implements "preventive measures" - cameras and microphones in every home, in every room. Now, they might achieve the great reduction of violence, might even catch one terrorist. As always - think about the children, we could prevent all those terrible parents that beat their offspring and catch all those wife beating husbands. And, lets think about what that would do to society...
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- sbov 10y ago
  Building on this line of thought, I never completely understood the description of crypto as a safe to the public. To me, it's more about mandating how I decide to communicate: requiring I speak a language the FBI can understand, that I always speak loudly and clearly enough such that their recording devices can accurately capture what I'm saying, that I always write my letters in a language they can understand, etc. Crypto isn't a safe, it's the ability to talk in a language only two people understand. Unlike a safe, they have access to the data. They just can't understand it.
pricechild 10y ago
> Imagine your government made it mandatory to leave keys in a certain place so police could enter a property in a hurry. I'm sure this actually happened somewhere in the US... it might just have been proposed but I distinctly remember reading about mailbox-like containers at the bottom of drives locked with a master key. Does anyone else? Edit: More than once apparently, "lockbox" was the term I was missing when googling earlier: http://wcfcourier.com/news/local/update-cedar-falls-city-council-oks-controversial-lock-box-ordinance/article_64b970a2-9624-11e0-93e5-001cc4c002e0.html http://wcfcourier.com/news/local/update-cedar-falls-city-cou... http://archive.northjersey.com/community-news/2.4225/rescuers-don-t-need-to-break-in-1.1414551?page=all http://archive.northjersey.com/community-news/2.4225/rescuer...
- dom0 10y ago
  These are fairly standard in larger building complexes in Germany. We call them Feuerwehrschlüsseldepot (key depot for the fire dept.); they're very well secured, both physically and organizationally.
- teddyh 10y ago
  I remember reading about those; allegedly, those are used by estate agents when showing houses for sale. Apparently those boxes are often really easy to break into.
  - cratermoon 10y ago
    Current state of the art in real estate lockboxes includes wireless technology so the devices can communicate usage. They are in the IoT space of vulnerabilities.
- dwyerm 10y ago
  You might also be thinking of a Knox Box. A key securely stored in a firetruck can be used to open a small box on your property, which contains a master key for the facility. As scary as that sounds, it isn't /completely/ stupid. The system is designed to make using this backdoor is exceptionally noisy. Your Knox Box should have a tamper switch inside, so that any time it is opened, alarms go off. At the other end, when the key is removed from a firetruck for use, alarms go off.
mchannon 10y ago
Average Joe looked at your post, enjoyed the colorful icon at the top for a brief moment, and then his eyes glazed over. If you really want to resonate with him, publish this in comic book form. I'm serious.
metaphorm 10y ago
average joes probably aren't reading things on an obscure medium blog getting linked on hacker news. this community has read, in depth, the similar writings by Schneier and the rest.
- frickinLasers 10y ago
  But those who read this here might share it with five average joes, perhaps one of which might really get upset about the situation and call their congresscritter. If this argument is presented in several different formats and enough average joes hear about it and get upset enough to act on it, then maybe--just maybe--we can fight this bill off, again. And perhaps, over time, public awareness will grow enough that Jim Comey eventually stops making flawed arguments and begins working with the system instead of trying to game it.
  - metaphorm 10y ago
    I think it's naive to believe that the FBI (or any other intelligence or law enforcement agency) will ever be willing to see their own power checked. The way to check the power of those agencies is by having Congress pass exceptionally strong laws that explicitly forbid them from abusing their power.
- xatan_dank 10y ago
  I think the immediate purpose of this article is not necessarily to mobilize the average joes to collectively demand better security law. Mobilizing the average joes is less a problem of theory and more a widespread organizational effort. To have that effort in the first place though, you need people willing to take a leadership role who deeply understand the theory behind their actions.
natch 10y ago
A stab at a shorter version. Feel free to steal, improve, and then take credit. Takes his best point and then adds some examples of why it is scary: If device makers and online services are required to set aside a master key for the government, how would we be protected from abuse if the government was ever to become corrupt? If pervs at the Department of Homeland Security wanted to rifle through pictures of our children, they could. With enough government corruption, if the local sheriff, or the US President, or anyone in between, wanted to read the most private thoughts shared with us by our loved ones, they could... keeping in mind that even if we have nothing to hide, our loved ones might like their privacy. The more corrupt the government, the more ways they would dream up to abuse the power of this kind of mandatory master key. In the case of the US, thankfully our government is headed by people with the highest ethical standards... oh, wait, it isn't! Besides privacy invasion by rogue government employees, the other problem is the fact that such keys can, and likely will, leak out to bad people who will use them to get into our bank accounts and take our money. Even the US NSA cannot protect its most dangerous hacking tools from being released on the internet. It won't be able to protect this master key capability either. Requiring a master key for the government would be a very misguided and dangerous policy.
- 3131s 10y ago
  Given how much Democrats and Republicans detest each other's candidates, you'd think it would have sunken in by now that relinquishing basic rights and allowing the government to create powerful apparatuses prone to abuse is never a good idea, no matter how much you trust the current people in power. Even if you loved Bush, next up you get a closet-Muslim itching to take your guns away (/s), and even if you loved Obama, now you get a narcissist with fascist tendencies behind the reigns (/s?).
  - lmickh 10y ago
    Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what your country can do for them. Why worry about precedence? When I'm in power I'll just change the rules!
- avn2109 10y ago
pthreads 10y ago
Someone tell El Presidente that with a backdoor others will be able to read his tax returns and bingo he will veto any such bill! Also, 'security backdoor' is an oxymoron. There is no such thing. It is either secure or has a backdoor.
w8rbt 10y ago
To prevent backdoor abuse, you could have a shared key controlled by various parties. A scheme such as Shamir's Secret Sharing - "An algorithm in cryptography created by Adi Shamir. It is a form of secret sharing, where a secret is divided into parts, giving each participant its own unique part, where some of the parts or all of them are needed in order to reconstruct the secret." Source - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamir's_Secret_Sharing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamir's_Secret_Sharing
- gbrown 10y ago
  Mathematically, you're correct. Unfortunately, real world systems have bugs, and even multiple parties can be compromised. Back doors are a bad idea.
  - kefka 10y ago
    But that's explicitly not a backdoor. That's straight forward, "If permission is granted from 2 opposing parties, crypt can be reversed". And that would have to be added to the crypt on cyphertext creation. And the Bitcoin protocol has a similar thing, with escrow key permissions. Again, intended behavior, not some "super sekret backdoor".
    - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
      If I'm the encrypter, and I don't want the two parties to read it, that's a backdoor.
      - kefka 10y ago
        That's being rather obtuse. I can easily parse that the contents are encrypted to X keys. I'm thinking of something obvious like GPG here. I would accept the idea of a backdoor IFF the program encrypting hid the fact that it also encrypted to an escrow unawares to you, along with keeping that a secret.
        10y ago
oldgun 10y ago
Damn, it's 2017 and we're still arguing on why leaving a gaping hole in your house is dangerous.
- boie0025 10y ago
  I remember thinking a long while ago that the whole "clipper chip" thing was going to be the end of this debate. I'm completely astonished by how this just continues to play out, over and over.
  - wu-ikkyu 10y ago
    It doesn't seem so astonishing when you recognize the inordinate leverage the oligarchy has in controlling the government and framing the "public debate".
    - linkregister 10y ago
      Yawn. "The oligarchy" who you never identify would include the owners and shareholders of businesses who would suffer catastrophic business losses in the event an encryption-defeating law were passed. Various billionaires are adversarial with respect to the laws they support and the media narratives their companies push (e.g. Washington Post vs Fox News). They don't act in concert.
      - wu-ikkyu 10y ago
        oligarchy != billionaires club
        linkregister 10y ago
        Who are the oligarchy?
        wu-ikkyu 10y ago
        Those who are above the rule of law
syberspace 10y ago
> Imagine your government made it mandatory to leave keys in a certain place so police could enter a property in a hurry. Isn't that literally what the TSA lock on luggage is? Granted, I wouldn't regard a suitcase made of bunch of plastic or fabric as very secure against any form of attack, but why do all these arguments against backdoors never mention this? And with the TSA master keys leaked a couple of years ago all it needs is one malicious airport worker to open your bags and sniff your panties, erm, steal your laptop.
- atqtion 10y ago
  > Isn't that literally what the TSA lock on luggage is?... And with the TSA master keys leaked a couple of years ago all it needs is one malicious airport worker to open your bags and sniff your panties, erm, steal your laptop. Good point. > but why do all these arguments against backdoors never mention this? However, I don't think arguments against back doors should mention TSA luggage locks! It's a bad prior. You don't want people in the "airport" mindset when you're trying to convince them not to allow the government to snoop. People who enter airports (or especially customs) basically give up all of their rights to privacy. And most Americans are apparently OK with this. Begrudgingly, perhaps, but ultimately most people accept it and go on with their life. So, "think about airports" is a really terrible persuasive setting. Instead, you want people thinking about their bedroom. About their car. About their child's playroom. About the settings where they live 99% of their life. Because that's the setting that government back doors in consumer electronics expose. And that's the setting where people get most uncomfortable about carte blanc government access.
bronzeage 10y ago
The "it will be found and abused" argument is wrong on so many levels. Let's start with the facts: - All modern software in fact has a public well known backdoor. - That backdoor is called the private key for software updates. - Despite being well known feature, no criminals have abused it so far, and we consider it completely safe. - The argument of "it can't be done" is actually null and void. It was already done and even implemented. - Why do you trust those companies more than your government. I don't see how a corrupted cop is more likely than a corrupted developer. Being a developer obviously makes your point of view biased. - Where the government can be limited by whatever laws you choose to implement, those companies and their security practices are entirely up to them. - It's not a question of whether it's possible, it's a question of whether it should be done, and if so how. - Open source is not much more trustable. End of the day most of the sane people do not recompile every binary, and with CVEs and security patches coming all the time you still need someone to provide the updated binaries.
- bronzeage 10y ago
  P.S. If you really are overly paranoid about the government, you should've assumed the NSA actually have all those private keys, but they reserve it for the most critical cases and only select few know it. You would also assume the russians / china have access to that because you're overly paranoid and everything can be breached, and they don't care about these companies being american.
faragon 10y ago
One thing is an easter egg for enabling debug stuff in order to help diagnosis, and another, a super user backdoor, which in my opinion, should be legislated: i.e. in case it exists, it should be disabled by default, or having a big warning (labeled in the box, with a removable stick, or whatever), so you can choose before the purchase.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

101 points by CM30 10y ago

CM30 10y ago

Or in other words, an article I wrote a while back explaining (to complete idiots) why a security backdoor is a bad idea in general. Why no, you can't 'have an encryption hole just for police/authorities to use'. Perhaps a few politicians may even reconsider their attitudes towards encryption and security in general. Eh, probably not.

panzer_wyrm 10y ago
Iphones have built in security backdoor called trust apple code signing. That is the foundation of their walled garden. So far Apple seem to protect it pretty well. They show that only the good guys can control the backdoor argument is not without merit.
- Retric 10y ago
  For one system, over a few years when few people are trying to break in sure. But, the history of those trusted systems is terrible overall. Look at video game consoles for example and it's not just one or two that but all the major companies that tried generally several times each. EX: https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2012/10/25/sony-ps3-hacked-for-good-master-keys-revealed/ https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2012/10/25/sony-ps3-hacked-... And no the US government has not done much better.
  - panzer_wyrm 10y ago
    I do not support the walled garden, mandatory code signing from anybody but the owner and so on. People should control their devices. I just point that apple show that keeping keys really works. I don't think that console jailbreaks are from leaked keys (except ps3) but from normal exploits.
    - Retric 10y ago
      There has been several different leaked keys for different systems. Remember, Blue Ray had the same issue five different times in 06, 08, 09, 11, and 12. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controvers... Also, maintaining back doors would be a significantly harder problem than just keeping keys on a server used to sign things. Apple can for example keep the keys on an offline private server, but that's not really viable if 10 or 100's of thousands of people across multiple agency's of state, local, and federal law enforcement need access to break into things. Worse you could quickly find nobody outside the US would be willing to use our software or services.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - CM30 10y ago
    Another example along those lines is the NES Classic Mini. Doesn't connect to the internet, doesn't let you write anything to the console and doesn't come with anything like games to buy or extra storage mediums to use. Yet within weeks, people had hacked it wide open and stuck hundreds of ROMs on it.
- marcosdumay 10y ago
  > So far Apple seem to protect it pretty well. That we know of. It's also important to remember that the only public trial against that backdoor was only for show, and despite not officially breaking it, the attacker got everything on the phone anyway.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
corpMaverick 10y ago
Politians should be the first to worry about privacy. 1 - They are not guaranteed to always be in power. 2 - They will be the first to be targeted. 3 - They have the most to lose. I just don't understand why they don't care about it.
- 3131s 10y ago
  And we should worry about our politician's security too. What if they are blackmailed while in power? That creates a terrible national security situation. This line of argument would hopefully resonate with the constituencies of the politicians pushing hardest for these backdoors (although it's a fairly bipartisan effort).
  - pbhjpbhj 10y ago
    With backdoors, which I'm not advocating for incidentally, the TLAs know they're being blackmailed and can intervene. Without that access politicians can still be blackmailed but it's harder for the TLAs to know about it.
    - 3131s 10y ago
      Is that necessarily true? With a scheme like key escrow, is there a sure-fire way to detect a hacker as opposed to an authorized user accessing data? At the very least it seems that if the NSA itself or some other agency were hacked (again) then this problem would still exist. The NSA has notably lacked this type of audit trail in their systems before, hence their inability to track Snowden.
- white-flame 10y ago
  Congress was absolutely aghast when they found out they were being spied on by the three letter agencies, whenever they met with foreign representatives. But they don't care at all when it's applied to the general public, because they assume they'll have clout or connections to keep that at bay. I've never heard anything come out of that above kerfuffle, presumably because there was some backroom dealing done to ensure it's not a problem for them specifically.

sosodaft 10y ago

I shortened it from a three minute read to a one-second one: Someone will find it.

AnimalMuppet 10y ago
And publish it. And then everyone will have it.

fivestar 10y ago

Also, don't think about this tech just in the first world, but in the most corrupt, Third World hellhole where human rights are routinely violated and ask yourself why would we sentence brave people to even more misery and suffering?

DarkKomunalec 10y ago

I've said it before and I'll say it again: too much focus is being put on how backdoors can be abused, and too little on why mandating them is a terrible idea in general. If we decide we don't have the right to conceal our digital correspondence from the government, what else should we not be allowed to conceal? The conversations you have in your car? In your home? Besides the right to privacy, what other rights make fighting terrorism harder? Freedom of association and movement? Freedom of speech, which is regularly used for recruitment? Finally, if they really want someone's data, in a covert way, they're already able to plant hardware keyloggers, or spy on someone as they enter a password, etc. But it all requires manpower. What backdoors would let them do is monitor encrypted communications covertly and in bulk. To build up a database of all your chats and forum posts, and mine it for any anti-current-politics sentiment.

type0 10y ago
> If we decide we don't have the right to conceal our digital correspondence from the government, what else should we not be allowed to conceal? The conversations you have in your car? In your home? Let's say the Government decides that it has a zero tolerance for domestic violence, it goes ahead and implements "preventive measures" - cameras and microphones in every home, in every room. Now, they might achieve the great reduction of violence, might even catch one terrorist. As always - think about the children, we could prevent all those terrible parents that beat their offspring and catch all those wife beating husbands. And, lets think about what that would do to society...
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
sbov 10y ago
Building on this line of thought, I never completely understood the description of crypto as a safe to the public. To me, it's more about mandating how I decide to communicate: requiring I speak a language the FBI can understand, that I always speak loudly and clearly enough such that their recording devices can accurately capture what I'm saying, that I always write my letters in a language they can understand, etc. Crypto isn't a safe, it's the ability to talk in a language only two people understand. Unlike a safe, they have access to the data. They just can't understand it.

pricechild 10y ago

> Imagine your government made it mandatory to leave keys in a certain place so police could enter a property in a hurry. I'm sure this actually happened somewhere in the US... it might just have been proposed but I distinctly remember reading about mailbox-like containers at the bottom of drives locked with a master key. Does anyone else? Edit: More than once apparently, "lockbox" was the term I was missing when googling earlier: http://wcfcourier.com/news/local/update-cedar-falls-city-council-oks-controversial-lock-box-ordinance/article_64b970a2-9624-11e0-93e5-001cc4c002e0.html http://wcfcourier.com/news/local/update-cedar-falls-city-cou... http://archive.northjersey.com/community-news/2.4225/rescuers-don-t-need-to-break-in-1.1414551?page=all http://archive.northjersey.com/community-news/2.4225/rescuer...

dom0 10y ago
These are fairly standard in larger building complexes in Germany. We call them Feuerwehrschlüsseldepot (key depot for the fire dept.); they're very well secured, both physically and organizationally.
teddyh 10y ago
I remember reading about those; allegedly, those are used by estate agents when showing houses for sale. Apparently those boxes are often really easy to break into.
- cratermoon 10y ago
  Current state of the art in real estate lockboxes includes wireless technology so the devices can communicate usage. They are in the IoT space of vulnerabilities.
dwyerm 10y ago
You might also be thinking of a Knox Box. A key securely stored in a firetruck can be used to open a small box on your property, which contains a master key for the facility. As scary as that sounds, it isn't /completely/ stupid. The system is designed to make using this backdoor is exceptionally noisy. Your Knox Box should have a tamper switch inside, so that any time it is opened, alarms go off. At the other end, when the key is removed from a firetruck for use, alarms go off.

mchannon 10y ago

Average Joe looked at your post, enjoyed the colorful icon at the top for a brief moment, and then his eyes glazed over. If you really want to resonate with him, publish this in comic book form. I'm serious.

metaphorm 10y ago

average joes probably aren't reading things on an obscure medium blog getting linked on hacker news. this community has read, in depth, the similar writings by Schneier and the rest.

frickinLasers 10y ago
But those who read this here might share it with five average joes, perhaps one of which might really get upset about the situation and call their congresscritter. If this argument is presented in several different formats and enough average joes hear about it and get upset enough to act on it, then maybe--just maybe--we can fight this bill off, again. And perhaps, over time, public awareness will grow enough that Jim Comey eventually stops making flawed arguments and begins working with the system instead of trying to game it.
- metaphorm 10y ago
  I think it's naive to believe that the FBI (or any other intelligence or law enforcement agency) will ever be willing to see their own power checked. The way to check the power of those agencies is by having Congress pass exceptionally strong laws that explicitly forbid them from abusing their power.
xatan_dank 10y ago
I think the immediate purpose of this article is not necessarily to mobilize the average joes to collectively demand better security law. Mobilizing the average joes is less a problem of theory and more a widespread organizational effort. To have that effort in the first place though, you need people willing to take a leadership role who deeply understand the theory behind their actions.

natch 10y ago

A stab at a shorter version. Feel free to steal, improve, and then take credit. Takes his best point and then adds some examples of why it is scary: If device makers and online services are required to set aside a master key for the government, how would we be protected from abuse if the government was ever to become corrupt? If pervs at the Department of Homeland Security wanted to rifle through pictures of our children, they could. With enough government corruption, if the local sheriff, or the US President, or anyone in between, wanted to read the most private thoughts shared with us by our loved ones, they could... keeping in mind that even if we have nothing to hide, our loved ones might like their privacy. The more corrupt the government, the more ways they would dream up to abuse the power of this kind of mandatory master key. In the case of the US, thankfully our government is headed by people with the highest ethical standards... oh, wait, it isn't! Besides privacy invasion by rogue government employees, the other problem is the fact that such keys can, and likely will, leak out to bad people who will use them to get into our bank accounts and take our money. Even the US NSA cannot protect its most dangerous hacking tools from being released on the internet. It won't be able to protect this master key capability either. Requiring a master key for the government would be a very misguided and dangerous policy.

3131s 10y ago
Given how much Democrats and Republicans detest each other's candidates, you'd think it would have sunken in by now that relinquishing basic rights and allowing the government to create powerful apparatuses prone to abuse is never a good idea, no matter how much you trust the current people in power. Even if you loved Bush, next up you get a closet-Muslim itching to take your guns away (/s), and even if you loved Obama, now you get a narcissist with fascist tendencies behind the reigns (/s?).
- lmickh 10y ago
  Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what your country can do for them. Why worry about precedence? When I'm in power I'll just change the rules!
avn2109 10y ago

pthreads 10y ago

Someone tell El Presidente that with a backdoor others will be able to read his tax returns and bingo he will veto any such bill! Also, 'security backdoor' is an oxymoron. There is no such thing. It is either secure or has a backdoor.

w8rbt 10y ago

To prevent backdoor abuse, you could have a shared key controlled by various parties. A scheme such as Shamir's Secret Sharing - "An algorithm in cryptography created by Adi Shamir. It is a form of secret sharing, where a secret is divided into parts, giving each participant its own unique part, where some of the parts or all of them are needed in order to reconstruct the secret." Source - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamir's_Secret_Sharing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamir's_Secret_Sharing

gbrown 10y ago
Mathematically, you're correct. Unfortunately, real world systems have bugs, and even multiple parties can be compromised. Back doors are a bad idea.
- kefka 10y ago
  But that's explicitly not a backdoor. That's straight forward, "If permission is granted from 2 opposing parties, crypt can be reversed". And that would have to be added to the crypt on cyphertext creation. And the Bitcoin protocol has a similar thing, with escrow key permissions. Again, intended behavior, not some "super sekret backdoor".
  - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
    If I'm the encrypter, and I don't want the two parties to read it, that's a backdoor.
    - kefka 10y ago
      That's being rather obtuse. I can easily parse that the contents are encrypted to X keys. I'm thinking of something obvious like GPG here. I would accept the idea of a backdoor IFF the program encrypting hid the fact that it also encrypted to an escrow unawares to you, along with keeping that a secret.
      - 10y ago

oldgun 10y ago

Damn, it's 2017 and we're still arguing on why leaving a gaping hole in your house is dangerous.

boie0025 10y ago
I remember thinking a long while ago that the whole "clipper chip" thing was going to be the end of this debate. I'm completely astonished by how this just continues to play out, over and over.
- wu-ikkyu 10y ago
  It doesn't seem so astonishing when you recognize the inordinate leverage the oligarchy has in controlling the government and framing the "public debate".
  - linkregister 10y ago
    Yawn. "The oligarchy" who you never identify would include the owners and shareholders of businesses who would suffer catastrophic business losses in the event an encryption-defeating law were passed. Various billionaires are adversarial with respect to the laws they support and the media narratives their companies push (e.g. Washington Post vs Fox News). They don't act in concert.
    - wu-ikkyu 10y ago
      oligarchy != billionaires club
      - linkregister 10y ago
        Who are the oligarchy?
        wu-ikkyu 10y ago
        Those who are above the rule of law

syberspace 10y ago

> Imagine your government made it mandatory to leave keys in a certain place so police could enter a property in a hurry. Isn't that literally what the TSA lock on luggage is? Granted, I wouldn't regard a suitcase made of bunch of plastic or fabric as very secure against any form of attack, but why do all these arguments against backdoors never mention this? And with the TSA master keys leaked a couple of years ago all it needs is one malicious airport worker to open your bags and sniff your panties, erm, steal your laptop.

atqtion 10y ago
> Isn't that literally what the TSA lock on luggage is?... And with the TSA master keys leaked a couple of years ago all it needs is one malicious airport worker to open your bags and sniff your panties, erm, steal your laptop. Good point. > but why do all these arguments against backdoors never mention this? However, I don't think arguments against back doors should mention TSA luggage locks! It's a bad prior. You don't want people in the "airport" mindset when you're trying to convince them not to allow the government to snoop. People who enter airports (or especially customs) basically give up all of their rights to privacy. And most Americans are apparently OK with this. Begrudgingly, perhaps, but ultimately most people accept it and go on with their life. So, "think about airports" is a really terrible persuasive setting. Instead, you want people thinking about their bedroom. About their car. About their child's playroom. About the settings where they live 99% of their life. Because that's the setting that government back doors in consumer electronics expose. And that's the setting where people get most uncomfortable about carte blanc government access.

bronzeage 10y ago

The "it will be found and abused" argument is wrong on so many levels. Let's start with the facts: - All modern software in fact has a public well known backdoor. - That backdoor is called the private key for software updates. - Despite being well known feature, no criminals have abused it so far, and we consider it completely safe. - The argument of "it can't be done" is actually null and void. It was already done and even implemented. - Why do you trust those companies more than your government. I don't see how a corrupted cop is more likely than a corrupted developer. Being a developer obviously makes your point of view biased. - Where the government can be limited by whatever laws you choose to implement, those companies and their security practices are entirely up to them. - It's not a question of whether it's possible, it's a question of whether it should be done, and if so how. - Open source is not much more trustable. End of the day most of the sane people do not recompile every binary, and with CVEs and security patches coming all the time you still need someone to provide the updated binaries.

bronzeage 10y ago
P.S. If you really are overly paranoid about the government, you should've assumed the NSA actually have all those private keys, but they reserve it for the most critical cases and only select few know it. You would also assume the russians / china have access to that because you're overly paranoid and everything can be breached, and they don't care about these companies being american.

faragon 10y ago

One thing is an easter egg for enabling debug stuff in order to help diagnosis, and another, a super user backdoor, which in my opinion, should be legislated: i.e. in case it exists, it should be disabled by default, or having a big warning (labeled in the box, with a removable stick, or whatever), so you can choose before the purchase.

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