Researchers uncover NSA tool, enables faster cracking of flawed RSA algorithm
In December 2013, RSA was accused – based on documents leaked by Edward Snowden – of entering into a secret $10 million agreement with the NSA to use a flawed encryption formula in its products, but a backdoor may not be all that was snuck in, according to researchers from various universities.
“Evidence of an implementation of a non-standard TLS extension called “Extended Random” was discovered in the RSA BSAFE products,” according to researchers from Johns Hopkins University, University of Wisconsin, Eindhoven University of Technology, and University of California, San Diego.
In September 2013, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), as well as RSA, advised against using the Dual Elliptic Curve Deterministic Random Bit Generator (Dual_EC_DRBG) algorithm because it contained a backdoor. All versions of RSA's BSAFE Toolkits were affected.
