In light of the revelations that the NSA has collaborated with — or if you prefer subverted — major technology manufacturers in order to get them to introduce NSA-friendly backdoors into their products, is it time to revisit the controversy over the _NSAKEY?
The _NSAKEY, you may recall, was a public key accidentally left in a Microsoft release of an update to Windows NT. It was discovered by 1999 by Andrew Fernandes. At the time Microsoft denied that the key had anything to do with the NSA, but was just a name they gave it as the product had to comply with export control law. And, at the time, the better view seemed to be that it was all just an accident of nomenclature, as there were much better ways to subvert the product.
Still, you gotta wonder.
