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>huge companies have built sturdy end-to-end encryption systems without key escrow? I would say that they haven't. _RSA_, whose only product is sturdy crypto,

>huge companies have built sturdy end-to-end encryption systems without key escrow? I would say that they haven't. _RSA_, whose only product is sturdy crypto, subverted their products. I would say that this sentence amounts to an unverified assumption. I can't actually think of an example - can you?

tptacek 12y ago
That RSA's only product is sturdy crypto would be news to RSA, which began as a two-factor token company (called SDTI), later purchased the RSA brand, and now sells a gigantic suite of enterprise security and compliance products, along with their flagship multi-factor products. I would be surprised to discover (but have not looked into it) that BSAFE --- the RSA product you're referring to --- was even a rounding error for RSA's revenue. If the closest you can come to arguing that all commercial tech enterprises are "voluntold" to build key escrow is a crypto library used by virtually no end-user encrypted communications systems, I'm suddenly a lot less interested in this discussion. I think Dual-EC probably was a backdoor. I think any commercial product that adopted Dual-EC is worthy of suspicion. Fortunately, so far as I can tell, virtually nothing that matters ever used Dual-EC.
- xnull2guest 12y ago
  Re: RSA having security and compliance products. This comment does nothing to dispel the thesis. RSAs primary business is secure software solutions, a major component of which is sound cryptography. If the financial kickback to RSA was 'small' (care to post an analysis) then they added the backdoor to BSAFE for other reasons. Therefore I don't think that argument addresses the thesis. Here are a list of suites NIST validated with DUAL_EC. http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/STM/cavp/documents/drbg/drbgval.html http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/STM/cavp/documents/drbg/drbgval.... Plenty of products relied on BSAFE including enterprise security products like McAfee. https://lwn.net/Articles/566329/ https://lwn.net/Articles/566329/ But practical impact aside, you haven't addressed the primary thesis.
  - tptacek 12y ago
    Sound cryptography is a tiny, tiny portion of software security. Most software security --- in fact, most information security in general --- doesn't touch on cryptography at all. Certainly most enterprise security and compliance products don't. Indeed, many random enterprise security products did use BSAFE. Most of them did so because during the mid/late '90s, a BSAFE license was how you shipped certificate-based public key features, because RSA was enforcing their patent. Many of those products include BSAFE on their manifest but use OpenSSL and Microsoft SChannel instead. And the features we're talking about are things like login pages or agent/server communications for things running on 10-net addresses. How many of those enterprise security products did end users rely on to protect their secrets from the USG? I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that number is zero.
    - xnull2guest 12y ago
      We are in mostly full agreement on this comment. (I do not think it challenges the thesis.)

tptacek 12y ago

That RSA's only product is sturdy crypto would be news to RSA, which began as a two-factor token company (called SDTI), later purchased the RSA brand, and now sells a gigantic suite of enterprise security and compliance products, along with their flagship multi-factor products. I would be surprised to discover (but have not looked into it) that BSAFE --- the RSA product you're referring to --- was even a rounding error for RSA's revenue. If the closest you can come to arguing that all commercial tech enterprises are "voluntold" to build key escrow is a crypto library used by virtually no end-user encrypted communications systems, I'm suddenly a lot less interested in this discussion. I think Dual-EC probably was a backdoor. I think any commercial product that adopted Dual-EC is worthy of suspicion. Fortunately, so far as I can tell, virtually nothing that matters ever used Dual-EC.

xnull2guest 12y ago
Re: RSA having security and compliance products. This comment does nothing to dispel the thesis. RSAs primary business is secure software solutions, a major component of which is sound cryptography. If the financial kickback to RSA was 'small' (care to post an analysis) then they added the backdoor to BSAFE for other reasons. Therefore I don't think that argument addresses the thesis. Here are a list of suites NIST validated with DUAL_EC. http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/STM/cavp/documents/drbg/drbgval.html http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/STM/cavp/documents/drbg/drbgval.... Plenty of products relied on BSAFE including enterprise security products like McAfee. https://lwn.net/Articles/566329/ https://lwn.net/Articles/566329/ But practical impact aside, you haven't addressed the primary thesis.
- tptacek 12y ago
  Sound cryptography is a tiny, tiny portion of software security. Most software security --- in fact, most information security in general --- doesn't touch on cryptography at all. Certainly most enterprise security and compliance products don't. Indeed, many random enterprise security products did use BSAFE. Most of them did so because during the mid/late '90s, a BSAFE license was how you shipped certificate-based public key features, because RSA was enforcing their patent. Many of those products include BSAFE on their manifest but use OpenSSL and Microsoft SChannel instead. And the features we're talking about are things like login pages or agent/server communications for things running on 10-net addresses. How many of those enterprise security products did end users rely on to protect their secrets from the USG? I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that number is zero.
  - xnull2guest 12y ago
    We are in mostly full agreement on this comment. (I do not think it challenges the thesis.)