> We have worked with the NSA, both as a vendor and an active member of the security community. We have never kept this relationship a secret and in fact have openly publicized it.
Liars. They publicized the $10 million deal?!
Liars. They publicized the $10 million deal?!
a) They have always had a relationship with the NSA as a vendor, and as a number of the security committee
b) They have never attempted to hide a)
c) As part of a) they have never signed a "secret contract" (for the mentioned 10 million)
That's their claim. Maybe they're lying about c), but you're barking up the wrong tree.
(edited for formatting)
"Recent press coverage has asserted that RSA entered into a 'secret contract' with the NSA to incorporate a known flawed random number generator into its BSAFE encryption libraries. We categorically deny this allegation."
The emphasis is mine. This quote allows for the possibility that they entered into a contract with the NSA to incorporate a random number generator that was not yet known to be flawed.
It doesn't matter if you have any other information on the security of the algorithm; the fact that they're offering you money should speak for itself.
The public cryptographic community started brute-forcing DES keys for fun in the '90s; with the NSA's budget, they could have been doing it from the beginning.
* DES keys are 64 bits, but 8 bits are for parity, so the meaningful key length is 56 bits.
It makes sense if you think about it: Both goals are useful to Uncle Sam and both require the same skill set. The trouble is it obviously creates quite the conflict of interest.
While a separate organisation might be best, even a division within NSA etc. explicitly tasked with protection rather than intelligence gathering would be preferable to the status quo, so long as its head could be publically known. In the end it comes down to there being no individual with that responsibility. You need someone who is visible in that role, whose mission is purely to protect, overseeing a staff whose mission is purely to protect.
What am I missing?
It's in the best interests of national security for the NSA to promote both good and/or backdoored algorithms for all allied nations and their corporations.
If you're going to call them out on being liars about that (go for it!), might want to make it less ambiguous.
For all its worth, I think RSA probably did help out the NSA with Dual EC DRBG, but:
a) Until I see some source documents from Snowden's stash, it's going to be all very annoying because until you see the terms of the contract (and no, you can't just go by some journalist's summary), you have no idea what RSA/NSA are dancing around
b) Whatever deal there was was probably set up in some fun way to make it all nicely deniable and even plausible sounding.
Crap. They're only denying a carefully-worded strawman. They leave open:
1.) Adding support for a known-flawed PRNG for free and then entering into a secret contract with the NSA to make the already-supported PRNG the default.
2.) Entering into a secret contract with someone else (FBI?) to "incorporate" a known-flawed PRNG.
3.) Entering into a secret contract with the NSA to use a PRNG that they didn't yet know to be flawed because they didn't look at it.
etc...
Edit: Pointed out first by https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6952801.
Edit: You're right, they did deny it 'as reported', with "Recent press coverage has asserted ...". This could involve a creative reading of "[r]ecent press coverage", or a lie.
Edit: Also, "Crap." wasn't directed at you. I'm sorry. It was directed at RSA; these stories always get me in a lather.
I think the real kicker here isn't that RSA was intentionally including maliciously modified algorithms as much as the NSA simply bribed^Woffered them $10 million to, err, "prioritize" its inclusion. This is probably more a lesson on distrusting government offers for lucrative contracts in exchange for nifty tools more than anything, IMO.
"RSA, as a security company, never divulges details of customer engagements, but we also categorically state that we have never entered into any contract or engaged in any project with the intention of weakening RSA’s products, or introducing potential ‘backdoors’ into our products for anyone’s use."
Maybe it hinges on misleading commas and the odd "for anyone’s use" part. With some gymnastics, I might be able to interpret that as meaning "we have entered into a contract and engaged in a project with the intention of weakening RSA’s products for some people's use".
a) They have always had a relationship with the NSA as a vendor,
b) That relationship is open.
C is only implied. The NSA may have paid them $10mm, but because of B, that would not count as a 'secret deal', just a deal that was not publicized.