text: NSA cracked most online encryption, say reports
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  date_range 6 Sep 2013 5:45 PM GMT
  date_range 2013-09-06T23:15:42+05:30
  Washinton: The National Security Agency, working with the British government, has secretly been unravelling encryption technology that billions of Internet users rely upon to keep their electronic messages and confidential data safe from prying eyes, according to published reports on Thursday based on internal U.S. government documents.
  "For the past decade, NSA has led an aggressive, multipronged effort to break widely used Internet encryption technologies," according to a 2010 briefing document about the NSA's accomplishments meant for its U.K. counterpart, Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ. Security experts told the news organisations such a code-breaking practice would ultimately undermine Internet security and leave everyday Web users vulnerable to hackers.
  The revelations stem from documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who sought asylum in Russia this summer. His leaks, first published by the Guardian, revealed a massive effort by the U.S. government to collect and analyse all sorts of digital data that Americans send at home and around the world.
  During a Web chat organised by the Guardian on June 17, 2013 Mr. Snowden told one questioner that "encryption works." Mr. Snowden said that "properly implemented strong crypto systems" were reliable, but he then alluded to the NSA's capability to crack tough encryption systems. "Unfortunately, endpoint security is so terrifically weak that NSA can frequently find ways around it," Mr. Snowden said.
  It was unclear if Mr. Snowden drew a distinction between everyday encryption used on the Internet the kind described in Thursday's reports versus more-secure encryption algorithms used to store data on hard drives and often requires more processing power to break or decode. Mr. Snowden used an encrypted email account from a now-closed private email company, Lavabit, when he sent out invitations to a mid-July meeting at Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport.
  The operator of Lavabit, Ladar Levison, suspended operations of the encrypted mail service in August, citing a pending "fight in the 4th (U.S.) Circuit Court of Appeals." Mr. Levison did not explain the pressures that forced him to shut the firm down but added that "a favourable decision would allow me to resurrect Lavabit as an American company."
  Such tensions between government officials and journalists, while not new, have become more apparent since Mr. Snowden's leaks. Last month, Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger said that British government officials came by his newspaper's London offices to destroy hard drives containing leaked information. "You've had your debate," one U.K. official told him. "There's no need to write any more."