Headline Nov 08, 2014/

''' *CRACKED CRYPTOGRAP​HY?! '''

THE TRUTH is  -for most of its history, cryptography was an arcane discipline, of interest only to mathematicians and to some parts of the government-

Just as the Internet was once an academic research network that paid little attention to security. But the world since, has not only changed but is transforming at a very fast rate:

Just consider this research, and  these facts and reasoning: 

INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES exist to steal secrets, and necessarily break other countries laws to do so.

Much of the brouhaha around the disclosures by Edward Snowden, a fugitive systems administrator, from America's National Security Agency now living in Russia, misses that fact.

But some of his latest leaks, published on September 5th last year, in Britain's Guardian and other outlets, highlights another aspect of NSA's work.

Purportedly, the NSA, with its British counterpart  GCHQ, is trying not just to break the codes that allow  private communication  over the Internet, but is sabotaging them.

The tactics allegedly include undermining official standards bodies, and suborning big IT companies   -if necessary by infiltrating them.

THE aim is to insert  ''backdoors''  :  hidden flaws that help outsiders to eavesdrop.

And the  New York  Times  quotes a GCHQ document which says that  NSA has ''led an aggressive, multipronged effort to break widely used  Internetencryption technologies''.

''Vast amounts of encryption data which used to be discarded are now very, very *exploitable*.  

Therefore, encryption of electronic data is is an essential part of modern life. It secures the  financial networks  that link the world's banks,  protects credit cards, 

Stops mobile-phone calls from being listened to- Guards medical records and lawyers' letters to their clients.

Though cybercrime is a growing menace, reliable encryption remains the foundation on which  trillion-dollar edifice of  e-commerce is built:

Without it, nobody would be able safely to make a payment online.

For critics, sabotaging such codes is akin to a government secretly commanding lockmakers to make their products easier to pick  -and to do so amid an epidemic of burglary.

Researchers, civil libertarians and conspiracy theorists have long suspected that policemen and spies:

 Would take steps hamper individuals access to the uncrackably strong codes that modern computers can create.

In the  1990s   America classed  cryptography as a weapon, and let only weakened versions of it be sold to abroad.

Western spies were rumoured to have installed  ''backdoors''  into equipment sold by Crypto, a Swiss firm which exported to the Libyan and Iranian governments -the firm, however, denied it.

Some export version of  Lotus Notes, a rival to Microsoft's office suite of software, came with weakened secrecy.

In 1999 researchers unearthed signing software suspiciously entitled  ''NSAKEY'' in some versions of Microsoft windows   -the company denied that it was backdoor.

The Honour and Serving of the  Operational research- will continue at regular intervals in the future. Thank you for reading, as I get geared up to research       e-commerce.

With respectful dedication to all the   Security Agencies  of the world. See Ya all Sirs/Madams on !WOW!  -the World Student Society Computers-Internet-Wireless:

''' Spying Securely '''

'''Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless