On 2015-04-14 12:40, Dan Asimov wrote:
They're based on arrangements with the manufacturer to create a means of entering the computer and controlling it.
The main *public* instance of this with computers that I'm familiar with (of course, there could be others) was the Clipper chip. My recollection is that protests succeeded in squelching this (and the Clipper chips never were deployed at scale, unpopular because of this backdoor and for other reasons). However, if you're talking about network switches, not computers in general, then the CALEA laws require (I think) that every switch has a mechanism to allow the government (subject to warrants and other legal constraints) to tap all traffic going through the switch. My memory is very fuzzy on this point, but I think all switches/routers produced in the US may be required to have this a CALEA tap of some sort. I think both of these cases are distinct from the ability "to bypass any 'password protected' login ...", but recent news items certainly lend credence to the belief that backdoors such as you describe actually exist. I'm just not sure about how officially these are acknowledged. Finally, back to Warren's first proposal: is it substantially different from the myriad schemes in the category of "secure bootstrap", "trusted computing base", etc?
--Dan
On Apr 13, 2015, at 9:26 PM, Dave Dyer <ddyer@real-me.net> wrote:
At 09:07 PM 4/13/2015, Dan Asimov wrote:
Don't know if this is what you have in mind, but hasn't the gov't (I don't know which agencies, exactly) arranged to be able to bypass any "password protected" login (at least on personal computers) via some kind of back door built into the machines?
There have been at least strong rumors to that effect.
sure, but are they based on flaws hidden by the complexity of the chips, or on ordinary software that uses well understood behavior?
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