Internet Firms To Be Banned From Offering Unbreakable Encryption Under New UK Laws (telegraph.co.uk)

Retron writes: Despite statements from the minister for internet safety and security Baroness Shields last week that the UK government would not require software developers to build backdoors into their products, the Telegraph is reporting that the UK Government is going to ban companies from offering 'unbreakable' encryption, effectively requiring a backdoor in products from the likes of Google and Apple. The reasons given are that they don't want the likes of terrorists and paedophiles to communicate in places the Police can't reach. A Home Office spokesman said: “The Government is clear we need to find a way to work with industry as technology develops to ensure that, with clear oversight and a robust legal framework, the police and intelligence agencies can access the content of communications of terrorists and criminals in order to resolve police investigations and prevent criminal acts."

Comments

Sigh

[MPBoulton]

Is this the sort of thing that the EU could override?

Re: Sigh

[John Allsup]

People often overlook the issue of verification. If you take a small structured dictionary which takes in, say, 128 bits, and outputs a nonsense poem using the words of the dictionary and some simple rules, you have a reversible procedure for turning 128 bit hashes into literary nonsense. Reverse the procedure and apply a simple procedure to the original 128 bit hash to see if it contains a message. The simple procedure may include things about the sender. The trouble for crackers here, is that there are many such procedures. A simple software example is to append 'Borg' to a message, hash it with shasum, and see if the first two hex digits are f7, say, else discard. Then using evolutionary programs to find a short procedure which generates indices recursively for words in a video file [ with feedback, so the second index requires having the correct video file on hand ]. Guessing a random 128bit passkey is bad enough, but guessing a random procedure is far worse. Having everybody just [ just! ] using aes128 will seem like paradise compared to the output of the computational arms race the UK government is inadvertently about to kick off.

I have fond memories of the old msdos program insults.exe. it has not escaped my attention that one can take a 128 bit number [ possibly the output of a sugared hash ] and use bits from it as indices into tables to generate phrases. There is much fun to be had, and so many variations. The paper from wayback about chaffing and winnowing will perhaps have more attention payed to it.

Interesting philosophical dilemma

[swillden]

I work for Google. I build strong encryption in Android. The possibility of laws mandating back doors creates an interesting dilemma for me. Supposing such a law were to exist, and were effectively enforced so there's no possibility of sneaking in a non-backdoored system, what would I do?

I see three options.

1. I could run away from the problem, changing jobs to let someone else deal with it.
2. I could accede, trying to build the tightest, narrowest, best-controlled backdoor possible, doing my best to ensure that only authorized government agencies could use it.
3. I could refuse to build strong security systems at all, making it clear to everyone that their data is unprotected.

What's the right thing to do? #1 is out, unless I have some reason to believe that someone else could make better decisions. #3 has some nose-thumbing appeal, but it means that everyone's data is accessible not only to government agencies, but to thieves, family members, spouses, etc. Also, this may be equivalent to #1, in that I'll be shuffled to another job and replaced by someone willing to build back doors.

So, frankly, it's actually not much of a dilemma at all. I would do #2 (choice of number was not accidental). Well, and I'd probably also contribute to open source, possibly underground strong crypto implementations in my free time, because I strongly believe that the ability of people to keep secrets is critical to individual freedom and to societal progress. But such systems would only be used by a handful, seriously reducing their value.

It's really, really important that we fight this sort of thing in the public, though. I've never been asked to build in back doors, and I never want to be.

Oh, and by the way: Those of you out there who complain that you don't want full device encryption because it's slow? The slowness may be annoying, but it's well worth it. Not so much to you, now, but to everyone, in the future. Have a little patience with it. It will get faster over time as hardware gets faster and perhaps dedicated encryption hardware is added, but if we don't get it in now, setting the precedent that it's normal to encrypt everything, all the time, with the strongest crypto we can find and no back doors, there's a much greater risk that we may not be allowed to do it later.