[Cryptography] Dual_EC_DRBG backdoor: a proof of concept

[ianG]

Tantalising!  I've no time to look (and wouldn't know an eliptic curve 
if it slapped me in the face).  Comments?



http://blog.0xbadc0de.be/archives/155

If you still believe Dual_EC_DRBG was not backdoored on purpose, please 
keep reading.

In 2007 already, Dan Shumow and Niels Ferguson from Microsoft showed 
that Dual_EC_DRBG algorithm could be backdoored. Twitter also uncovered 
recently that this algorithm was even patented in 2004 by Dan Brown (Not 
the Da Vinci guy, the Certicom one) as a “key escrow mechanism” 
(government jargon/lingo for trapdoor/backdoor).
I will go a little bit further in explaining how it works and give a 
proof-of-concept code, based on OpenSSL FIPS. This is in the best of my 
knowledge the only public proof of concept published today. (correct me 
if I’m wrong).

...