Comment Re:On what basis can you make this demand? (Score 1) 99
> They can't go and release the details of a confidential contract simply because somebody thinks it contains something it doesn't have.
Given that NSA made the contract in bad faith, is RSA Security still obligated to keep their silence? Maybe, but it seems insane. What RSA Security could say for starters was for example to explicitly confirm that a $10,000,000 contract exists. They haven't even done that.
RSA Security also have not yet given a good explanation for why they ignored the multitude of red flags until 2013. As cryptographer Matthew Green writes:
> So why would RSA pick Dual_EC as the default? You got me. Not only is Dual_EC hilariously slow -- which has real performance implications -- it was shown to be a just plain bad random number generator all the way back in 2006. By 2007, when Shumow and Ferguson raised the possibility of a backdoor in the specification, no sensible cryptographer would go near the thing. And the killer is that RSA employs a number of highly distinguished cryptographers! It's unlikely that they'd all miss the news about Dual_EC.
If RSA Security makes secret contracts that impacts other people's security, I don't see why RSA Security should get any benefit of the doubt. Why should we trust a company cloaked in secrecy who has shown themselves to be overwhelmingly incompetent and/or malicious?