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Lawful Hacking

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Posted: October 11th, 2015

By Robert Knake

Rob Knake is the Whitney Shepardson Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. His work focuses on Internet Governance, public-private partnerships, and cyber conflict.  Knake served from 2011 to 2015 as Director for Cybersecurity Policy at the National Security Council.

According to press reports, the White House has considered and rejected four options to address the so-called “going dark” problem where the growing ubiquity of encryption is making it harder for law enforcement agencies to collect evidence and investigate crimes. Options considered include adding an encrypted port to devices, using software updates to compromise devices, splitting encryption keys, and uploading encrypted data to an unencrypted backup location.

All these options have significant drawbacks and none have been put forward as administration proposals. Yet one idea seemingly didn’t make the cut: law enforcement exploitation of vulnerabilities, or what Steven M. Bellovin, Matt Blaze, Sandy Clark, and Susan Landau, dub “lawful hacking.”

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Categorized as:Reporting Tech/CyberTagged with:

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