Security company RSA denies knowingly installing NSA 'back door'

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

Security company RSA denies knowingly installing NSA 'back door'

Charles Arthur
theguardian.com, Monday 23 December 2013 19.30 GMT

The security company RSA has denied that it knowingly weakened the encryption it used in its products as part of a secret contract with the US's National Security Agency.

A report from the Reuters news agency on Friday alleged that RSA arranged a $10m contract to use a mathematically weaker formula in a number of its products, which would in effect have created a "back door" for cracking encrypted messages or communications.

RSA initially declined to respond to the reports. But in a blogpost on its site posted Sunday, the company now says: "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."

It adds that "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. Our explicit goal has always been to strengthen commercial and government security."

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Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/dec/23/security-company-rsa-denies-installing-nsa-back-door

[OnyxCollie]

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