RSA denies taking $10m from NSA to default backdoored algorithm
EMC-owned RSA Security has denied reports that the company had entered into secret contracts with the NSA worth $10 million to use the flaws Dual Elliptic Curve Deterministic Random Bit Generator (Dual_EC_DRBG) as the default pseudorandom number generator for the company's encryptions products.
Over the weekend, sources told Reuters that as part of the US National Security Agency's (NSA) efforts to promote Dual_EC_DRBG, the use of the algorithm by RSA allowed the agency to point to its usage within government to help push for its inclusion in the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Recommendation for Random Number Generation Using Deterministic Random Bit Generators (PDF).
"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," RSA responded today in a blog post.
