The NSA Is Building the Country's Biggest Spy Center
m.wired.com
m.wired.com
"According to another top official also involved with the program, the NSA made an enormous breakthrough several years ago in its ability to cryptanalyze, or break, unfathomably complex encryption systems employed by not only governments around the world but also many average computer users in the US."
The article insinuates that it's AES (or something closely related.) That would be pretty amazing.
That, or it's false information so that cocky hackers, or moles in groups, can convince their peers that they should use an insecure, custom algorithms. It's impossible to tell.
"Yeah, I know AES is standard, but it's well known that the NSA has broken it, we should use this cool alternative crypto technique I invented instead."
Even if only a handful of people were being stupid, the NSA might be able to get sufficient information to be useful.