As Feds Demand the Keys, Preparing for the Death of Public-Key Encryption
> Public-key cryptography as we know it today may be rapidly approaching the end of its useful lifespan.<p>No evidence in the article substantiates this bold statement.<p>- "pressuring major Internet firms to provide their "master" SSL keys for government surveillance purposes": this demonstrates a weakness of centralized public-key infrastructures, it does not follow that public-key cryptography is doomed. (See: web of trust.)<p>- wiretaps, snooping, etc.: everyone is welcome to grab a copy of the ciphertext, this does not prove that cryptography is futile -- quite the contrary.<p>- "concerns about the security of widely used cipher algorithms and a range of other associated exploits": vague.<p>- "it is prudent to at least assume that intelligence agencies around the globe may still be working several steps ahead of public "state of the art" in crypto tech": unfalsifiable.<p>- "forced the hands of chip manufacturers to include "special goodies" for surveillance purposes": I am willing to fear deliberate plausibly deniable weaknesses on accelerated hardware implementation of crypto primitives, e.g., PRNGs, but it seems very hard to believe that implementations of public-key crypto using general purpose instructions could be somehow identified by the CPU and somehow tampered with in a way which would be non-obvious somehow.<p>- "when governments really want to target someone, they'll find some way to compromise the associated computers directly -- either through phishing or other malware attacks, or via in-person "black bag" jobs to physically alter systems as they might feel appropriate": humans are the weakest part of cryptosystems, and if they have physical access then they win; nothing new here.<p>In conclusion:<p>> I believe it would be fully appropriate for us to be considering alternative methodologies for data protection that are sufficiently outside the existing public-key "box"<p>Public-key cryptography is a tool. It certainly does not form, in itself, a full "methodology for data protection", but nothing in the article justifies that has lost any usefulness in its current form.