The Glade 4.0

Is anyone else following this train wreck?

Short version:

Former CTO of NSA consultant firm emails chief architect of OpenBSD with accusation that 10 years ago, FBI paid specific developers (by name) to subtly undermine and backdoor OpenBSD's IPSEC implementation. Hilarity and code audits ensue.

Personally, I'm leaning towards Perry being a nutjob, but still ... at the very least, his tinfoil is unusually shiny. Everyone specifically fingered has, of course, denied the allegations in their entirety. And now we've got a former FBI agent (E. J. Hilbert) tweeting in on the whole affair (tweeting, I say!). On one hand, he denies Perry's specific claims. On the other hand, well ... there's this:

Ugh. Somehow I'm not reassured.

But I suppose that's hardly any surprise. At the time, the three letter agencies were publicly lobbying for strong crypto software to be backdoored and/or key escrowed for spying law-enforcement purposes. That didn't work out too well for them, so I guess the rest is pretty predictable. At least he seems to be implying that OpenBSD (maybe other OSS as well?) were resistant to this kind of attack.

I swear, this is freaking _NSAKEY all over again.

_________________
Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

You sound surprised?

Stathol:

What?

Someone is claiming that the FBI secretly paid developers to build a 'back door' in the protocol that the majority of encrypted VPN (Virtual Private Network) tunnels are built on, in the OpenBSD operating system.

Wouldn't suprise me to be honest.

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

It doesn't surprise me that someone made the claim.

It wouldn't surprise me if it were true (although some things about the nature of his claim make me dubious)

It wouldn't surprise me if the 'tried and failed' thing were true either...

It would surprise me if this were actually successfully implemented, and actually successfully USED by anyone ever.