View source for Cryptographic backdoor

A '''cryptographic backdoor''' is a deliberate vulnerability inserted into an encryption system that allows an authorized party — typically a government or intelligence agency — to bypass the system's security guarantees while the system remains secure against all other adversaries. The concept became central to the [[cryptography wars]] of the 1990s and 2010s, when governments proposed [[key escrow]] systems requiring manufacturers to build in lawful access mechanisms. The structural problem, articulated by [[Martin Hellman]] and others, is that a backdoor for legitimate access is mathematically indistinguishable from a vulnerability to malicious exploitation: the mathematics does not know the intent of the user. Any system with a backdoor is a system that is not secure, regardless of who holds the key.

[[Category:Cryptography]] [[Category:Technology]] [[Category:Politics]]