The wrong approach to encryption could make us more vulnerable – Prospect

It's impossible to create a backdoor that only the "good guys" can use by Wendy M. Grossman / June 5, 2017 / Leave a comment

After WhatsApp was used by the Westminster attacker, Amber Rudd vowed to take on encryption. Photo: PA

From pig Latin to the complex mathematics of todays computer encryption, encoding communications is as old as humanity. Often, as with Alan Turings work in World War II, cracking the enemys codes has conferred crucial military advantage.

Because the internet was designed to share, rather than secure, information, encryption plays several important roles in todays digitised landscape. It ensures that sensitive data cant be read by unauthorised people: when a healthcare manager forgets the clinics laptop in a taxi, a criminal steals a companys usernames and passwords, or a consumer sends credit card details to an online retailer, encryption protects the data against interlopers.

Encryption also provides a way to check that digital filesfrom the software programs that run your cars braking system to medical images and electronic payments havent been tampered with.

Around 1990, three interrelated developments coalesced to disrupt the policies that govern encryption. The first was the culmination of two decades during which there had been growing adoption of computers and computer networks. Second, cryptographers began working outside the militaryin academia and commercial companies. Third, computing plummeted in costwhile escalating in power.

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The wrong approach to encryption could make us more vulnerable - Prospect