Massive Clinton-era Internet bug shows pitfalls of Obama's 'backdoor' proposal
A Clinton-era Internet law is coming back to haunt us by exposing our private online messages to hackers. Now, the Obama administration is lobbying Congress to repeat the same policy all over again.
This week, computer researchers announced they found a massive weakness in Internet software. "Logjam," as they called it, allows hackers to spy on your online communications. It affects thousands of websites and every browser. Logging into your email, bank or Facebook (FB, Tech30) on public Wi-Fi or over a virtual private network (VPN) isn't safe.
How did this happen? In the 1990s, the Clinton administration wanted to control who got to use online encryption, a tool that keeps your messages private by turning a regular sentence into nonsense code before it travels across the Internet.
The Clinton White House wanted encryption in the hands of Americans -- not foreigners. And it wanted spies and cops to be able to break that encryption and listen in on private communications whenever they wanted.
So, it restricted the export of powerful data encryption, forcing American companies to sell two versions of encryption: weak and strong.
We've since moved on. Export controls were relaxed. But it turns out the weak stuff remained buried in code everywhere.
A team of computer researchers on Wednesday revealed how pervasive this weakness is: Every major Web browser has it (Google Chrome, Android, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Apple Safari). And 8% of the top million websites are vulnerable.
http://money.cnn.com/2015/05/21/technology/clinton-law-privacy/index.html?iid=EL