Commercial key recovery
Stephen Todd Walker, Steven B. Lipner, Carl M. Ellison, David M. Balenson · Communications of the ACM · 1996
possible.This capability provides an advantage to the eavesdropper and a serious disadvantage to the target of the eavesdropping.Sometimes the eavesdropper is the governmenteither law enforcement or an intelligence agencyand these agencies have learned to prize such sources of information very highly.They entail minimum risk for agents without inhibiting the conversations of the targets.Sometimes the eavesdropper is a criminal and the target is a solid citizen.In that case, security is needed.Cryptography provides the needed security and digital computers provide a means to implement high-quality cryptography with minimal inconve-