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forlorn

Why does nobody remember the story of 1998 when NSA and Microsoft were caught at including backdoors into Windows?

CNN article (1998) [ http://edition.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9807/27/security.idg/ ]

Heise article (1999) [ http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/5/5263/1.html ]

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Because those of us that remember also remember it was basically a hoax.

Here is a rundown of 'incident' happened -

Researcher finds variable named _NSAKEY ... ...

That's it. From there we go to the la la land of conspiracy theories based entirely on the name of a variable.

But I'm just some guy on the internet. There's also this - http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-9909.html#NSAKeyinMicros...

I thought of posting about the _NSAKEY some time ago, but searched HN and found quite a few references, without much discussion. It seems (for reasons I cannot understand) to be greatly ignored. I find it to be particularly relevant post-Snowden.

Even back when it was first discovered it seemed to be forgotten virtually overnight - everyone seemed to buy into Microsoft's feeble explanation.

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