How the NSA is cracking encryption

The National Security Agency is bypassing encrypted Internet connections because the encryption data is all the same, researchers posited this week. It has long been believed the NSA had a way to bypass common types of encryption, but its methods haven’t been known.

“There have been rumors for years that the NSA can decrypt a significant fraction of encrypted Internet traffic,” Alex Halderman and Nadia Heninger wrote in a study Wednesday. “The key is, somewhat ironically, Diffie-Hellman key exchange, an algorithm that we and many others have advocated as a defense against mass surveillance.”