Tag: security

The little lock icon is a thing of beauty. 

 <img src="/images/img_0494.png"">

This all traces back to the Clinton administration. The US government wanted decided that cryptography was the same as military weaponry. This led to an export ban in which US designed crypto apps couldn’t be sold outside the US borders. This was also a time when most software was shipped on physical media. There also a belief that software respected international borders.

What happened then was “export grade” (i.e. weak 40-bit encryption) became the default used in “international” versions of things like web browsers. This was one of the first attempts to create an encryption backdoor. The idea was that the US could decide who gets strong crypto. Then it could eavesdrop on the countries or groups that had the weak encryption.