Experts forced the NSA to abandon the two methods of encryption
By Prempal Singh
The international group of experts on cryptography forced the US National Security Agency to abandon the two encryption methods known as Simon and Speck, which the intelligence service proposed to establish as international standards.
According to experts from different countries, including Germany, Japan and Israel, the NSA promotes new methods not because of their effectiveness, but because they know how to hack them. This is reported by Reuters referring to the electronic letters and reports of experts that were at the disposal of the agency.
The NSA agreed to abandon these algorithms, except for the most secure versions. The US delegation on encryption in the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) includes several NSA officials, although controlled by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI).
The revelations of the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden about the Agency’s attempts to manipulate the adoption of encryption standards raised suspicions about the motives of the US delegation. According to some delegates from other countries, much of the skepticism is related to the 2000s when NSA experts developed the Dual Elliptic Curve encryption method, which was adopted as a world standard. According to the documents promulgated by Snowden, this was considered a success within the agency.
As explained by representatives of the NSA, new encryption tools were developed to protect government computer and communications equipment without losing computing power.
To date, ISO twice voted to postpone the process of approving the algorithms Simon and Speck. The International Organization for Standardization is a non-governmental organization dedicated to the issue of standards. To date, the ISO is composed of 165 countries. Russia joined the ISO Council in September 2005.