The New York Times has published further details of last week's leaked documents detailing the NSA's program of sabotage to crypto products and standards. The new report confirms that the standard that the NSA sabotaged was the widely-suspected NIST Dual EC DRBG standard. The Times reports that the NSA then pushed its backdoored standard through the International Organization for Standardization and the Canadian Communications Security Establishment.
NIST has re-opened the comments on its standard with the hope of rooting out the NSA sabotage to the random number generator and restoring trust in its work products.
The agency said that because of cryptographers’ concerns, it would reopen the public comment period for three publications — Special Publication 800-90A and drafts of Special Publications 800-90B and 800-90C — which all use the random number generator in question.
“If vulnerabilities are found in these or any other N.I.S.T. standard, we will work with the cryptographic community to address them as quickly as possible,” the agency’s statement said.
“I know from firsthand communications that a number of people at N.I.S.T. feel betrayed by their colleagues at the N.S.A.,” Mr. Green said in an interview Tuesday. “Reopening the standard is the first step in fixing that betrayal and restoring confidence in N.I.S.T.”
Government Announces Steps to Restore Confidence on Encryption Standards [Nicole Perlroth/NYT]
(via Interesting People)
