With technology companies embracing strong encryption, the US Government is now pushing for cryptographic “front doors” that would allow law enforcement to break encryption with a warrant. But is it even possible to build these “front doors” without introducing vulnerabilities that could be maliciously exploited? In this talk, I’ll sketch out a potential solution (and what I believe NSA/FBI wants to implement, based on their public statements) using public key cryptography, threshold secret sharing, and cryptographic hardware. I will also explain why “front doors” are still a bad and unworkable idea.
Karl Koscher is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California San Diego where he specializes in embedded systems security. In 2011, he and his collaborators were the first to demonstrate a complete remote compromise of a car over cellular, Bluetooth, and other channels. In addition to breaking systems, he also works on creating tools and technologies to enable developers to automatically find (and fix) potential security vulnerabilities in their embedded systems.