[Cryptography] RCMP Had BlackBerry's Global Decryption Key since 2010

[Thierry Moreau]

On 16/04/16 07:15 PM, Henry Baker wrote:
> At 05:05 PM 4/15/2016, Tom Mitchell wrote:
>> On Fri, Apr 15, 2016 at 6:57 AM, Henry Baker <hbaker1 at pipeline.com> wrote:
>> FYI --
>>
>> https://news.vice.com/article/exclusive-canada-police-obtained-blackberrys-global-decryption-key-how
>>
>> Exclusive: Canadian Police Obtained BlackBerry's Global Decryption Key
>>
>> ....
>> Since this is a "global" key global laws may cause problems for some involved persons.
>>
>> What a tangle...
>
> Now that the existence of this "Golden Key" has been made public, one can expect hackers & researchers to be pawing through old Blackberries looking for it.
>

In the years Reseach In Motion (RIM) marketed globally the Blackberry 
with end-to-end encryption with what looked like a sensible key 
management scheme, an export license would not (educated guess) be 
possible unless a back door is offered to "friends".

Thus, the exclusive is not so new (wholly to be expected).

In the same spirit, US gov executive has some RCMP friends.

Who can trust IT vendors?

> Any bets on how long this search will take?
>

There would be a KDC (key distribution center) public-private key pair, 
so the search would boil down to a factoring or discrete log challenge.

> Perhaps in time for Crypto'16/Blackhat'16/Defcon'16 in August?
>
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