It was called Clipper, and it was one encryption chipset developed and supported by the US government for a number of years, from 1993 to 1996. The ancient project is a warning to all security professionals and some policy makers.
As for the second group, the lesson taught by Clipper seems to have been forgotten, according to Matt Blaze, McDevitt Professor of Computer Science and Law at Georgetown University in the US. His statement was made at congress security USENIX Enigma yesterday in San Francisco.
But let's remember the story a little:
Clipper was one of her endeavors NSA to create a secure system encryptionς, το οποίο θα απευθυνόταν σε τηλέφωνα και άλλα εργαλεία. Το chipset κρυπτογράφησης της NSA, μπορούσε να παρακαμφθεί από την υπηρεσία πληροφοριών των ΗΠΑ εάν χρειαζόταν. Από την κατασκευή του το μικροτσίπ περιείχε ένα κλειδί 80-bit. Ένα αντίγραφο του κλειδιού είχε και η Αμερικάνικη κυβέρνηση. Έτσι, οποιαδήποτε δεδομένα κρυπτογραφούνταν από το chip θα μπορούσαν να αποκρυπτογραφηθούν αν τα χρειαζόταν η κυβέρνηση. Τότε χρησιμοποιήθηκε ο αλγόριθμος αντchangeof keys Diffie-Hellman for secure data exchange between devices.
This particular project faced very harsh criticism from its defenders better safetyand privacy who, from the early days of the world wide web, saw the enormous danger of the chipset:
If anyone outside the US government could find them wrenches or guess what, all Clipper-secured devices would be vulnerable to eavesdropping.
The years that followed Clipper's revelation were a period called "crypto wars." The first flash of the chipset slowly faded and was forgotten, while software encryption instead of hardware increased and led to the easing of government restrictions on the sale and use of the Clipper.
Blaze added something that is valid today, in the years 2020:
The pace of innovation and the unpredictability of how technologies are evolving make it extremely difficult to legislate an approach to encryption and backdoors. In other words, the security mechanisms that are required by law today, such as another eavesdropping system, could break in a few years, leading to disaster.
Today's technological advances, Blaze said, undermine the whole concept of backdoors and basic encryption.
The FBI and Trump administrations (and Obama before that) really want such a system, but they have to learn from history.
"The FBI is the only organization on Earth that complains that computer security is very good"
"If another basic eavesdropping mechanism were developed with the ignorance that Clipper was designed for in the 1990s, we would see it after ten years and it would seem just as ridiculous."
