Another interesting and important revelation from Snowden and Greenwald happened last week about the NSA implementing backdoors in security software – including pretty much every mobile phone device like iOS and Android. While this is nothing too surprising (or even new), it’s still alarming to see how encryption software making you believe that it is for your safety, is actually a commercial trojan horse sold for a lot of money. Take care of what software you use (open source is still a good way to go here).
For example, the NSA released an encryption standard called Dual_EC_DRBG. This standard was also ratified by NIST, the National Institute of Standards and Technology. While people used it in believe, it’s a safe standard, the NSA deliberately built weak aspects into the code to be able to predict the outcome. The weakness was already reported on in 2007, but it wasn’t proved (and taken seriously) until now.
Check out the Friday-Episode of Democracy Now! with Glenn Greenwald for an update directly from the source (after headlines).