As the National Institute of Standards and Technology puts the finishing touches on its Cryptographic Standards and Guidelines Development Process, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has joined the chorus of 20 other organizations and companies that are urging the standards body, in a letter, to “re-emphasize the importance of creating a process for establishing secure and resilient encryption standards, free from back doors or other known vulnerabilities.”
In a blog post that posits “we might be on the brink of another crypto war,” after one such battle in the 1990s tried to “limit the public's access to strong, secure cryptography,” EFF claimed that NIST standards broken by the National Security Agency (NSA) have had a “serious impact” on U.S. tech companies and urged NIST to take the coalitions recommendations seriously in an effort to save U.S. businesses and restore trust in NIST.