Security threats Toolkit

Story: Anger over encryption key seizure threat

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Back in the 1980s Phil Karn showed it is easy to build an encryption system that has multiple keys. Each key decrypts the encrypted block to a different message. The proposed law simply doesn't work faced with real crypto.

A second even worse problem is temporary keys. The keys used to encrypt network traffic are usually transient and invented by web browsers or even wireless router hardware. Try explaining that to a typical police grunt armed with a packet dump.

Trusted computing changes the rules further and I suspect that is why the government is moving now. The "crack they key" approach doesn't have long left.

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