Do you think that everything that has been said so far about the NSA by Edward Snowden is important? You should think again. If he doesn't find the reason, the latest revelations will give each of us reason to think about how unprotected we are on the Internet.
Confirming rumors and suspicions that have existed for years, it was revealed that the NSA is systematically working to break, bypass, or weaken every type of encryption that exists on the internet.
The NSA is working on several levels to make sure encryption won't stop their eavesdropping.
“Over the past decade, the NSA has been aggressively, multi-prongedly trying to crack the most widely used encryption technologies on the internet,” reveals a 2010 document from the British intelligence agency GCHQ , leaked by Edward Snowden. The document was published by the New York Times and the Guardian.
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“Too much encrypted data on the internet is now exploitable,” the document states.
This means that the encryption has been completely “broken”, through hacking into computers or networks that have administrative contact with the encrypted channel. The result is that access is gained to all data being transmitted in plain text.
It was also revealed that the NSA is exerting excessive pressure or coercing encryption software vendors to leave backdoors in their products, giving them a painless way to bypass encryption.
Finally, the NSA is constantly working to weaken the encryption standards used online. By exploiting the vulnerabilities they discover, the NSA can gain access to encrypted communications that others cannot penetrate.
These secret service efforts are top secret and known only to a select few, at least until now. Of course, these are not the only ways the NSA uses to bypass encryption. When all else fails, it uses brute force to break weaker encryption protocols. But imagine the margin of failure of brute force attacks with the secret service's supercomputers.
The leaked documents also mention a major “breakthrough” that took place in 2010 that made almost all internet traffic exploitable. There were no details about what exactly the NSA managed to achieve, as such information is only available to very high-ranking NSA officials.
