4 ms·

What's the precedent for a company ever being required to ship backdoored products to their customers by government legal order, NSL'd or otherwise? "The FBI o

What's the precedent for a company ever being required to ship backdoored products to their customers by government legal order, NSL'd or otherwise? "The FBI once lobbied for the government to give them that power!" or "look at these service companies that had evidence in their possession they were required to turn over!" are non-answers.

hodgesmr 12y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_BSAFE http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_BSAFE
- vezzy-fnord 12y ago
  An older example. One that attracted a lot of attention in the 90s, but was soon forgotten and is now largely a historical curiosity, even though it should have caused people to be aware of the pitfalls of unsupervised intelligence way before Snowden: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip
  - danielweber 12y ago
    Who was forced to use the Clipper chip? As your link points out, all the government could do was try to encourage manufacturers to go along, but even in the crypto wars of the 90's they couldn't make anyone get on board. EDIT Did anyone use the Clipper chip in any shipping product, ever? Note that a positive answer to this still wouldn't answer the question of a company being forced to do it by government order.
- danielweber 12y ago
  This is absolutely not the government requiring someone to do something by court order. it was also revealed that NSA had secretly paid RSA Security $10 million to use Dual_EC_DRBG This instance is unsettling -- especially to RSA customers -- but it is very much a different beast from a court or legal order requiring installation of a backdoor.
rlx0x 12y ago
Lavabit closed down because they would otherwise be required by law to compromise their entire customers security. Also as it is part of a NSL that no one is allowed to talk about it by fear of a prison sentence, it is very reasonable to assume that this happens a lot more often than the public knows.
- danielweber 12y ago
  Cool story, but not a response to my question. When has a company -- even a single one -- been required to backdoor a product they ship to customers by any kind of court order? (Lavabit is different in lots of ways. #1: not a product. #2: They actually had the evidence the government wanted and told the government so.)
brute 12y ago
In the case of the alleged steroid dealer, the feds seemed to compel Hushmail to exploit this hole, store the suspects’ secret passphrase or decryption key, decrypt their messages and hand them over. http://www.wired.com/2007/11/encrypted-e-mai/ http://www.wired.com/2007/11/encrypted-e-mai/ Technically, they were forced to collect the key which they would not have stored otherwise, so this does not count as "had evidence in their possession"
- danielweber 12y ago
  The specific thing about "had evidence in their possession" was to discourage very casual readers from saying "but but Lavabit!" Lavabit had intimated they were already in full possession of the data the government wanted, no architecture changes needed. Users connect to the service via a SSL (https:// https://) connection and Hushmail runs the Encryption Engine on their side Well, there we go. Right there they've got the Lavabit architecture, and all the same problems. The encryption and decryption is happening on the server, so the server has full access to the unencrypted messages. I've been asking for a while and there are still zero instances of a company being forced to ship a backdoored product to customers. Companies can be compelled to turn over evidence inside their servers, which is why any "encrypt in the cloud!" architecture is fundamentally vulnerable to government demand. Even if Hushmail didn't store the key at all, it was in their possession for some period of time. They can't be compelled to go back in time and retrieve things they threw out previously, but there is nothing unusual in the law about a court order compelling you to stop throwing out evidence about third-parties that temporarily passes through your possession. EDIT I know wonder if a "encrypt in client-side Javascript" technique would be immune to this particular attack. It has all the usual problems 'tptacek and others point out, but if the company is providing the encryption code to the customer, and then the customer encrypts, the company has a very good argument that all that stuff is not in their possession. (A lot of this might turn on the specific reading of the license. Sometimes companies want to maintain possession of the code they ship to you. It's a technically unsafe architecture so I suspect we'll never get the answer to this legal question.)

hodgesmr 12y ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_BSAFE http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_BSAFE

vezzy-fnord 12y ago
An older example. One that attracted a lot of attention in the 90s, but was soon forgotten and is now largely a historical curiosity, even though it should have caused people to be aware of the pitfalls of unsupervised intelligence way before Snowden: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip
- danielweber 12y ago
  Who was forced to use the Clipper chip? As your link points out, all the government could do was try to encourage manufacturers to go along, but even in the crypto wars of the 90's they couldn't make anyone get on board. EDIT Did anyone use the Clipper chip in any shipping product, ever? Note that a positive answer to this still wouldn't answer the question of a company being forced to do it by government order.
danielweber 12y ago
This is absolutely not the government requiring someone to do something by court order. it was also revealed that NSA had secretly paid RSA Security $10 million to use Dual_EC_DRBG This instance is unsettling -- especially to RSA customers -- but it is very much a different beast from a court or legal order requiring installation of a backdoor.

rlx0x 12y ago

Lavabit closed down because they would otherwise be required by law to compromise their entire customers security. Also as it is part of a NSL that no one is allowed to talk about it by fear of a prison sentence, it is very reasonable to assume that this happens a lot more often than the public knows.

danielweber 12y ago
Cool story, but not a response to my question. When has a company -- even a single one -- been required to backdoor a product they ship to customers by any kind of court order? (Lavabit is different in lots of ways. #1: not a product. #2: They actually had the evidence the government wanted and told the government so.)

brute 12y ago

In the case of the alleged steroid dealer, the feds seemed to compel Hushmail to exploit this hole, store the suspects’ secret passphrase or decryption key, decrypt their messages and hand them over. http://www.wired.com/2007/11/encrypted-e-mai/ http://www.wired.com/2007/11/encrypted-e-mai/ Technically, they were forced to collect the key which they would not have stored otherwise, so this does not count as "had evidence in their possession"

danielweber 12y ago
The specific thing about "had evidence in their possession" was to discourage very casual readers from saying "but but Lavabit!" Lavabit had intimated they were already in full possession of the data the government wanted, no architecture changes needed. Users connect to the service via a SSL (https:// https://) connection and Hushmail runs the Encryption Engine on their side Well, there we go. Right there they've got the Lavabit architecture, and all the same problems. The encryption and decryption is happening on the server, so the server has full access to the unencrypted messages. I've been asking for a while and there are still zero instances of a company being forced to ship a backdoored product to customers. Companies can be compelled to turn over evidence inside their servers, which is why any "encrypt in the cloud!" architecture is fundamentally vulnerable to government demand. Even if Hushmail didn't store the key at all, it was in their possession for some period of time. They can't be compelled to go back in time and retrieve things they threw out previously, but there is nothing unusual in the law about a court order compelling you to stop throwing out evidence about third-parties that temporarily passes through your possession. EDIT I know wonder if a "encrypt in client-side Javascript" technique would be immune to this particular attack. It has all the usual problems 'tptacek and others point out, but if the company is providing the encryption code to the customer, and then the customer encrypts, the company has a very good argument that all that stuff is not in their possession. (A lot of this might turn on the specific reading of the license. Sometimes companies want to maintain possession of the code they ship to you. It's a technically unsafe architecture so I suspect we'll never get the answer to this legal question.)