Secret backdoor conspiracy theory: Criticism of MS Windows

Secret backdoor conspiracy theory

In 1999 Andrew Fernandez, chief scientist with Cryptonym of Morrisville, North Carolina found a cryptographic public key stored in the variable _KEY and a second key labeled NSAKEY. The discovery lead to a flurry of speculation and conspiracy theories; such as the second key could be owned by the United States National Security Agency (the NSA), and that it could allow the intelligence agency to subvert any Windows user's security. Also researcher Dr. Nicko van Someren discovered these cryptographic keys and a third key in the ADVAPI.DLL file which, at that time, existed in Windows 2000 before its release. Concerns were raised about CPUs with encrypted instruction sets which, if they existed during that time, would have made it impossible to discover the cryptographic keys.

Microsoft denied the allegations — Microsoft attributes the naming of the key was due to a technical review by the NSA pointing out a backup key was required to conform to regulations.

No evidence other than the name of the key has ever been presented that the key enabled a backdoor.

Cryptographer and computer security specialist Bruce Schneier has also argued against the conspiracy theory pointing out that if the NSA wanted a back door into Windows with Microsoft's consent, they would not need their own cryptographic key to do so.

The cryptographic keys have been included in all versions of Windows from Windows 95 OSR2 onwards.

[SOURCE] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Microsoft_Windows#Secret_backdoor_conspiracy_theory

[RELATED] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY

PRISM (surveillance program): WE ARE WATCHED!

PRISM is a clandestine national security electronic surveillance program operated by the United States National Security Agency (NSA) since 2007.^[1][2][3] PRISM is a government codename for a data collection effort known officially as US-984XN.^[4][5]

Edward Snowden
Born	Edward Joseph Snowden June 21, 1983 (age 29)[1] Elizabeth City, North Carolina, United States
Status	In hiding, last known whereabouts: Hong Kong[2]
Nationality	United States
Occupation	System administrator
Known for	PRISM whistleblower

Documents leaked by Edward Snowden^[6] in June 2013 describe the PRISM program as enabling in-depth surveillance on live communications and stored information. It provides for the targeting of any customers of participating corporations who live outside the United States, or American citizens whose communications include web content of people outside the United States. Data which the NSA is able to obtain with the PRISM program includes email, video and voice chat, videos, photos, voice over IP conversations, file transfers, login notifications and social networking details.^[3]

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden

Facebook Removes Downloads of Your Posts

This post isn't exactly about math, but it is technical in nature, so I figured I'd get it out there. As part of my regular data-backup process, I routinely download my information archives from whatever online presences I can, such as Facebook (which I've been on since early 2010), Google Blogger (this blog you're reading right now), etc. Obviously on Facebook the thing that I'm most interested in is what I actually write, which are usually called "wall posts" (as opposed to photos or media, which I retain locally anyway). Once in a while I've found it very useful to pull up the downloaded posts file and search it for some particular bit of info, contact, or date. What I seem to have discovered is that sometime in the last few months, Facebook silently and completely removed our ability to download that "wall posts" information.

ORIGINAL LINK AND POST: http://www.angrymath.com/2013/06/facebook-removes-downloads-of-your-posts.html