Most interestingly is the researchers’ findings of what they describe as the backdoor in TEA1. Ordinarily, radios using TEA1 used a key of 80-bits. But Wetzels said the team found a “secret reduction step” which dramatically lowers the amount of entropy the initial key offered. An attacker who followed this step would then be able to decrypt intercepted traffic with consumer-level hardware and a cheap software defined radio dongle.
Looks like the encryption algorithm was intentionally weakened by intelligence agencies to facilitate easy eavesdropping.
There's an old saying that while there may be friendly foreign governments, there are no friendly foreign Intelligence Agencies. Or domestic ones either, seemingly.
Even if you're a LEO. Note that this makes secure police communications problematic. Not cool.
3 comments:
With what's obviously coming in the nearish future, insecure police communications is a feature, not a bug. At least to We, the People.
I have to wonder if someone like the Fibbies or No Such Agency paid someone to put the backdoor in. That would make the story doubly newsworthy because it would mean your comment about friendly intelligence agencies is right.
Or it could have been the other organized crime, the mafia.
What's that?
The NSA engineered their own backdoor into this decades ago?
This is my shocked face.
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