Pushes RSA to make it a Default in a key function (RNG) by giving them $10 Million.
NSA points to RSA as an early adopter and gets NIST to certify it.
Millions of systems are now protected by an RSA product that the NSA deliberately weakened.
Any sufficiently skilled rogue actor can attack virtually any business that uses these RSA products -
NSA (Cyber security Command) gets even more money to "Protect" us from said Rogue actors.
So all-in-all good investment on their part
Edit: Spelling fixed per commenter pointing out the difference between rouge and rogue. I did imply malicious actors not red-cheeked actors (not that they are mutually exclusive).
Lucky Green, who appears to have had inside knowledge of this deal based on this mailing list post from September, seems to disagree that this was a good investment:
"This was $10M wasted. While this vendor may have had a dominating position in the market place before certain patents expired, by the time DoD/NSA paid the $10M, few customers used that vendor's cryptographic libraries.
There is no reason to believe that the $250M per year that I have seen quoted as used to backdoor commercial cryptographic software is spent to any meaningful effect."
Interestingly the mailing list post doesn't seem to mention the use of RSA's adoption as a factor in the NIST standard, so it's possible that while their knowledge was more advanced than the public's they didn't know about that side-effect.
There's enough wrong with what the NSA has been doing, and enough reasons to encourage people to take an interest in how to curtail, or at least better police, their actions without resorting to tawdry conspiracy theories.
The NSA doesn't "protect" anyone. They are an intelligence agency. Their mandate is to collect information. The group you're thinking of, the one that's actually supposed to "protect" the network, is US Cyber Command: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Cyber_Command
"As part of the National Security Presidential Directive 54/Homeland Security Presidential Directive 23 (NSPD 54), signed on January 8, 2008 by President Bush, the NSA became the lead agency to monitor and protect all of the federal government's computer networks from cyber-terrorism." [Emphasis added]
Asymmetric warfare with multiple adversaries doesn't work that way. For example, Stuxnet did not make U.S power plants safe from malicious attackers. I recommend reading Ralph Langner's op-ed in the New York Times.
It did make word temporarily safer from Iran nuclear bomb though. Of course, it is only temporary, but almost everything you do is.
As for the article, it claims that Stuxnet "opened the Pandora box", but it did nothing of the sort. Stuxnet by itself did not enable anything that wasn't possible before - it was possible for malicious actors to create attacks on US networked infrastructure, and it still is. Stuxnet changed nothing there. Criminals and security professionals know the possibilities for a long time. And are using them. Making it sound as if the evil US has again spoiled the paradise for everyone makes no sense, and the author, being the expert in the field, should have known better, but looks like his political views overcame his professional judgement here.
Does anyone series believe that Iran is a threat to the world. How about basing threat levels on previous actions? For example, who invades countries most often? Or who's military kills the most people? I've heard about WMD threats before - and who did the invading and killing in the end? That saga ended with almost everyone looking bad.
Define "threat to the world". Can Iran destroy the whole world? Fortunately, not. Can Iran destabilize, hurt and incite violence? Not only can, it is doing it right now.
>>> basing threat levels on previous actions?
That would be stupid because it means that only the second action can be countered. Given how first action can cause devastating consequences, limiting oneself to only reacting to a second one would be terminally stupid. American administration, for example, was justly criticized for sleeping through 9/11, and acting unprepared when it happened. Generals like to prepare for the past wars, it is much easier, but there's no reason to condone such behavior.
>>> who invades countries most often?
Invasions can differ. If Nazi Germany invaded Poland once, and Britain invaded Nazi Germany once, they are not equal.
>>> who's military kills the most people?
Again, depends on the people. If Al-Qaida kills 3000 Americans in 9/11, and then Americans kill 10000 Al-Qaida fighters after that, I'd say good job, they only should have done it earlier, so we would have 3000 less victims.
>>> That saga ended with almost everyone looking bad.
It looks bad to you because you take an impossible position that fighting evil should be done without hurting anyone. It would be nice if there was a nice, fluffy, unicorn-land evil that you could fight by issuing a strongly-worded declaration of condemnation and maybe refuse to send them a Christmas card next time. Unfortunately, real evil is much harder and messier to fight.
I like that you use the term evil. Its good versus evil right? Bush didn't get far with that terminology. I'm not alone in feeling that a period of non-interventionism from America might help. The interventions of late have been fumbled and clumsy when put in a positive light. Torture, killing and ugly unilateralism. Recent acts in the Middle East may have killed tens of thousands of militants, but does anyone think it has knocked back the numbers? The hundreds of thousands of innocent (and not-quite innocent) killed and wounded have family and friends. Those people are no longer friends of America. The question that never seems to be asked, is why did September 11 happen. Sure, American intelligence failed. But somewhere further back, diplomacy failed. It takes a pretty unhappy situation for people to arrange such an horrific act, why did they end up like that? And what can be done to prevent it happening again? Bombing and invading hasn't worked. What's plan B?
>>> I'm not alone in feeling that a period of non-interventionism from America might help.
I know. People that thought if USA sees no evil, hears no evil and refuses to speak about evil then all troubles would happen to somebody else existed since there was such thing as USA. They were wrong then and are still as wrong now.
>>> The question that never seems to be asked, is why did September 11 happen
You must be kidding me. One has to be unusually dense or unwilling to hear to ignore the deafening choir of non-interventionists and generic America-is-root-of-all-evil crowd blaming America for what happened at 9/11. Of course, it only tells us about them, not about why this heinous atrocity has really happened. The solution there is simple - these terrorists saw America as their enemy, and given the opportunity to deal a heavy blow to the enemy - opportunity enabled in some measure by complacency of the American administration, who for a long time thought terror is something that happens in bad places like Middle East but can't happen in America, despite many warnings to the contrary - given that opportunity, they struck their blow. One doesn't need any more complicated theory than that. As for why they chose America as their enemy - one doesn't need too much theory in that either, given that ideologists of Al-Qaeda explain it all by themselves. Their goals as religious fanatics dreaming of subjugating other people to their rule are incompatible with America's role as a world power strategically and with America's support of people unwilling to accept radical islamist rule tactically. Of course Al-Qaeda is the enemy of America - what else could they be, given that their premises are diametrically opposed to every premise this country is built on?
>>> Bombing and invading hasn't worked.
What you're calling "worked"? To make the strategy, you first have to define the goal. If the goal is "to ensure America is never the target of a terrorist attack", the solution is simple - America must cease to exist. If America exists, it can be target of a terrorist attack, and there's no known way to prevent it with 100% certainty. One, however, can make it harder to do, and for that there are many various plans, both good and bad.
> Define "threat to the world". Can Iran destroy the whole world? Fortunately, not. Can Iran destabilize, hurt and incite violence? Not only can, it is doing it right now.
So strictly speaking, the US is the bigger evil because it is doing all those things right now, and has the capability of destroying the world through nuclear holocaust.
> Again, depends on the people. If Al-Qaida kills 3000 Americans in 9/11, and then Americans kill 10000 Al-Qaida fighters after that, I'd say good job, they only should have done it earlier, so we would have 3000 less victims.
This line of reasoning. This here. That is evil.
"Depends on the people", oh my god.
By the way the US has already killed far more than 10,000 in response to the WTC attacks. And not just "fighters" either.
And if you still somehow can say this was warranted--I have no (nice) words if you do--ask yourself why they hijacked those planes in the first place. It wasn't because "mwuahaha let's do something evil against those unfaithful white men dogs" (the hijackers themselves maybe were told something like this, a variation on your "it depends on the people"), but the actual cause was the US' meddling in the Middle East in earlier decades (during the Gulf Wars and before) that ended up killing their guys. Which made them decide that a mission like this was a completely reasonable response. Someone might have even claimed something ridiculous like "we should have done a 9/11-type attack much earlier, and save all those victims" (which makes about as much sense as your claim that killing 10,000 AQ fighters sooner would somehow have prevented 9/11).
They have about as much claim of being the "good guys" as the US. Which is, none whatsoever.
>>> So strictly speaking, the US is the bigger evil because it is doing all those things right now
No, it is not.
>>> This line of reasoning. This here. That is evil.
But I if under "evil" you understand "defending yourself against attack" then I can understand why you call the US "evil". However, it is your private meaning of the world "evil", unknown to the rest of the world.
>>> "Depends on the people", oh my god.
Of course it does. One is justified to use violence in defense against attack. I'm surprised it needs to be explained.
>>> By the way the US has already killed far more than 10,000 in response to the WTC attacks.
The US killed people in war, it is true. That, unfortunately, the only way to fight wars. If you invent some way to win wars without killing anybody, be sure to tell, it would be most wonderful invention. Until you do that, that's the way we have. When attacked, there's only two ways to behave - submit to the attacker or fight back. I don't think submitting would be a good option.
>>> the actual cause was the US' meddling in the Middle East
Very funny word that "meddling". Like "I shot this guy because he was meddling with my robbery and was trying to stop me, so I'm completely in the right". Of course US is "meddling" - without that "meddling" real evil - you know, guys like Hitler, Hussein, Pol Pot, etc. - would feel much freer to perpetrate their evil deeds. "Meddling" is the only moral thing to do if you see people's rights violated and freedoms infringed.
>>> Which made them decide that a mission like this was a completely reasonable response.
The fact that it seemed reasonable to them means nothing. Everybody thinks their behavior is reasonable - murderers, robbers, rapists, thieves, serial killers - all of them think they're very reasonable people in unusual circumstances that make them do those things. There are very few people that say "I'm evil to do this, but I will still do it". Yet it is evil to do what they do, and your relativism and attempt to present it as if there's no right and wrong but only somebody's opinion can only lead to a moral bankruptcy.
>>>> So strictly speaking, the US is the bigger evil because it is doing all those things right now
> No, it is not.
??? Yes it is!
It's replaced countries leaders with ones more suitable to US interests. Thrown entire countries into a state of war. That's destabilizing.
I'm going to hope we can agree that throwing bombs on people is hurting them?
Finally, if providing terrorist organisations (AQ was an "ally" back then) with weaponry isn't "inciting violence", then I don't know what is. Also quite destabilizing to the region btw.
> Of course US is "meddling" - without that "meddling" real evil - you know, guys like Hitler, Hussein, Pol Pot, etc. - would feel much freer to perpetrate their evil deeds. "Meddling" is the only moral thing to do if you see people's rights violated and freedoms infringed.
I'm going to ask you to be a bit more skeptical than that. You do know that the US gov / military has routinely lied about their intents to the US people right? So you should at least give some consideration to the following:
Saving the poor people of the Middle East from those evil dictators was not the reason for getting involved at all.
Gaining political and military control over one of the largest deposits of fossil fuels, of course is.
Why do I believe this is the case? Because there's TONS of terrible evil being committed to poor people all over the world, many of these things would be quite the low hanging fruit to get involved with. But instead, the US picks this rich and relatively well-armed hornet's nest to get sucked in by. Oops.
Judging that in the category of "saving people from evil / having their rights violated and freedoms infringed", it's pretty much an abject failure. With those very same resources they could have saved so much more lives if they really cared for that, at the cost of so much less lives of American soldiers, if they even cared for THAT.
There are so many really real evil guys in the world, committing really really bad atrocities on the people they sit on top of, in countries you really never hear about because they're poor and far away and not really interesting (untrue, Tajikistan is super interesting).
Also it's super easy propaganda-wise to paint the cause for fighting in a far-away country as something heroic and moral, when it's really about oil, power and control. There's a few more motivating factors besides those, but none of them amount to "because we're the good guys".
Finally to address your point about relativism and moral bankruptcy. IF I could truly and honestly believe that the US primary goal in the Middle East is to save these people from evil dictators and provide them with freedom and human rights (c'mon! it can't even provide those to US citizens at home!), if I could believe that to be true, then I'd probably be mostly in agreement with you, really. Doing good is a good thing.
It's just that, from the outside, it seems pretty obvious that the US is not there with the intent to do good to the people, but to control the natural resources and sources of power.
Every time you seen people all "yay! the evil dictator is gone!" it turned out to be a photo-op, didn't you notice? Didn't you see the zoomed-out version of that well-directed scene where they toppled Saddam's statue? Tanks! Cameras! Action! Most non-actor people were instead wondering "when will the US stop occupying our country". The REAL celebrations you won't see, will happen when your soldiers finally leave (aka, never).
A war between Israel and Iran would be an epic disaster; too bad to even consider leaders of either country being that stupid. I think the arming of Israel with nuclear weapons is probably the biggest mistake the US has ever made... If Israel didn't have nuclear weapons there would be no way I'd consider Iran trying to get them (at almost any cost - we should have aiming for a nuclear free world), but with the situation as it is I wholly sympathise with their position.
Fortunately, leaders of Israel do not rely on your consideration when determining what is necessary to protect their country. It is very nice that you wouldn't consider Iran attacking Israel if Israel didn't have advanced weapons - but there's a little wrinkle in this otherwise perfect argument. Iran doesn't need your consideration to attack Israel - they are perfectly capable of doing so without it, and already doing it, albeit through proxies. If Israel did not possess advanced weaponry, they would do it directly - as was done many times before in history, and only the repeated failure taught those countries that direct attack does not work. Some of them learned the lesson and reluctantly accepted the existence of Israel, some just concluded they need a different, smarter tactics.
Oh maybe France sold them the material, but we all know America is consulted all the way on these things. If America had have said no it wouldn't have happened.
It's funny how oil was running out in the 70s and still running out 40 years later. I'd imagine it will be running out pretty much the same way in 40 years, and 40 years after that.
Or it won't, since technology will replace the need for it long before that. We don't use horses to drive our cars not because we've run out of horses.
Well, there's some unsubstantiated optimism if I've ever seen it. Let's hope you're right, but right now the physics and economics do not support your exuberance.
It is substantiated by centuries of human history. And by physics and economics too. Particularly, economics teaches us that when resource's price raises, attractiveness of substitutes and thus investment into improving these substitutes raise considerably. And physicists are working on solving problems that block our progress for finding alternatives right now (e.g. on increasing energy density for electrical storage, increasing energy efficiency of solar cells) - and there are some encouraging signs there too. E.g. this one: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/natu...
may allow producing solar energy much cheaper than before.
A catchy sound byte, but in almost all practical situations, the best defence is avoiding conflict. In fights: flee. In international affairs: diplomacy.
That is disasterous. That logic is why Chaimberlain allowed Hitler to get more and more and more power. ("Surely they'll agree to peace if we just let them have Poland.")
It is also why my generation (I'm 27) will eventually have to fight a nuclear war that pits Iran against Israel and possibly the US.
That war will potentially kill millions. And whose fault will it be? Obama's and Bush's. They will (if history is just and we don't change course) go down in history as potentially making mistakes that killed millions, just as Stalin and Hitler did.
Or we could insist now (or, ideally, a few years ago) that Iran not develop nuclear weapons capability, if necessary fighting a minor tactical war to stop them.
(There is NO reason to have Vietnam IV, where Afghanistan and Iraq are Vietnam II and III. Except of course socialism for defense contractors and altruism as we throw away trillions "re-building" the latter two countries.)
The reality is that Britain wasn't ready. Chamberlain bought us the time needed to power up to fight the Battle of Britain in 1940. Which we won. 2 years later, having profited from selling weapons to both sides, America sees which way the wind is blowing and decides to join the winning team.
PS You forgot Clinton bombing pharmaceutical plants in Sudan, then taking his eye off the ball to play his sax, schmooze with Hollywood and chase skirts, while the wheels of 9/11 were set inexorably in motion.
Battle of Britain was won because the Canadian air force shot down huge numbers of Messerschmitts, and because a German pilot screwed up and bombed London against orders not to do so, instead of focusing on air strips and bases. Result was Allies bombed German cities in retaliation and Hitler ordered London destroyed which took the focus off disabling the Royal AF, and allowed Britain to regain air superiority and stop the attack. Anyways this has nothing to do with RSA taking a bribe to sell feeble crypto products
Your contortions, while amusing, rewrite history in order to maintain your unhealthy obsession with America's alleged wickedness. Sure, Europe won the war and the US tagged along. Right. Whatever you need to believe to try to hold your precious worldview together, reality be damned.
The reality is probably that neither the US nor Russia could have defeated Germany alone. The GP is wrong that the US joined the "winning side" though - they joined the losing side, because a Europe united under one hostile power would be a fundamental security threat to the US.
You should have hedged with "can be" instead of "is." Fighting preemtive wars can be disastrous too.
> my generation (I'm 27) will eventually have to fight a nuclear war that pits Iran against Israel and possibly the US
Do you seriously believe that? Sure, Iran will get to throw their weight around a bit more with nuclear power, but they're not that desperate or stupid.
> Obama and Bush ... will go down in history ... just as Stalin and Hitler did
No.
> a minor tactical war [would] stop [Iran from developing nuclear weapons]
Maybe. You complain about "throwing away trillions" fighting silly wars and re-building countries. You do realize that the exact same sell (fight a minor war, stop the terrorists!) was used for the last two multi-trillion-dollar debacles, right?
Either we give them a bloody nose and they just try again (keeping their cards closer to their chest this time) or we spend trillions trying to install another puppet government.
That may be (although it amounts to a gross oversimplification), but it's still a functional government and a self-interested bureaucracy. Daily life goes on in Iran much as anywhere else. Council of religious fanatics notwithstanding, and its occasional grandiloquent pronouncements also notwithstanding, Iran's government is mostly full of administrators and workers that implement things like water treatment, motor vehicle registration, low-income housing, zoning, meat inspection, and energy. There is most definitely logic to Iran, much as to any other actually-existing government.
There's even logic to its foreign relations, underneath the ideological veneer. Imagine if someone thought US policy actually worked literally as presidential speeches suggest; you'd think they're an ignorant tool. "Everyone knows that speeches are just speeches," you'd say, with no connection to the actual practice of governance. It may surprise you to learn that it's like that in any state, including Iran.
Disclaimer: US citizen living in Armenia, NW of Iran. None of the very numerous Iranians here leave one with the impression that they are from a place with "no logic". Turn off Fox News.
> Imagine if someone thought US policy actually worked literally as presidential speeches suggest; you'd think they're an ignorant tool. "Everyone knows that speeches are just speeches," you'd say, with no connection to the actual practice of governance.
I don't agree with this at all. For instance, Obama has done what he promised: More big government programs and spending, nationalized healthcare. People knew what they were getting with Obama when he ran for President. There are a lot of problems with America but I can't stand it when people attack it for reasons that it actually doesn't deserve.
> None of the very numerous Iranians here leave one with the impression that they are from a place with "no logic".
I was referring to the government, which was pretty explicit. Fundamentally, there is a tradeoff between religiosity and logic in any religious government. The two are opposites. We cannot assume that Iran will never instigate a war for religious reasons, or that no rogue element of its government will ever share its weapons with outside religious groups.
> Turn off Fox News.
We can discuss the issues, but you cannot dismiss me by trying to claim I'm ignorant. I actually don't even watch Fox News, but I disagree with maligning Americans who do.
1. Obama most certainly did not implement "nationalised" healthcare. Nationalised healthcare refers to a state-owned and operated healthcare sector. In any case, whatever it is that the administration implemented, there seem to be some doubts as to its viability.
I can point you to a litany of campaign and post-inaugural promises that are widely perceived to be broken by a large cross-section of people, from closing Guantánamo to definitively and swiftly ending American involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq.
2. "We cannot assume that Iran will never instigate a war for religious reasons, or that no rogue element of its government will ever share its weapons with outside religious groups."
So, factionalism exists within the Iranian state? And what is the American state, a univocal monolith? For an overplayed but relevant example, I give you Iran Contra, or, for that matter, the runaway intelligence apparatus that Snowden helped put into sharper relief.
The point being that there are semi-autonomous appendages to any non-trivially-sized state. It should come as no surprise to anyone that there are extremist elements within Iran. Indeed, I would be willing to grant you that the extremist elements are more prominently positioned and influential within Iran's state. That's a far cry from "there is no logic to Iran". What does that even mean?
The way in which Iran has conducted its foreign policy strongly suggests that the usual constraints of geopolitics apply to it. This is unsurprising, as these constraints are essentially independent of the complexion of a national government.
USA made a war claiming that Iraq had Nuclear weapons. Apparently it didn't. The only one who gained anything from Iraq war, were 7 USA-based oil companies.
Iran has lost the war vs Iraq a some years ago. As a European, I don't see Iran as a threat. But you probably do...
That's wrong. We do know that they had been trying to develop nuclear weapons for years. The first reactor was bought from France in the 70s and the Israelis bombed Iraq a few times to stop them from developing nuclear weapons. The same will happen with Iran if they do not stop enriching uranium above energy-related levels.
Back to Iraq, there was evidence that was presented to Congress, and if you ask most of the people who voted to authorize the war based on the evidence, such as Hillary or John Kerry, they say they have no regrets in voting that way (i.e. http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/21/iraq.hillary/).
Now, in hindsight, whether all that evidence was correct is an entirely different debate.
If you explain to me why Iran can not have nuclear weapons while USA and Israel (and France and the UK and Russia and Korea and China) can I'll give it a second thought.
My personal view is that the USA was interested in the oil sitting there. End of story. Same thing with Ghadafi. The rest is politics to justify a war that doesn't make any sense.
Indeed the Iraq war was Blair's political destruction in the UK. Why do you think no one wants to attack Syria? Out of lack of evidence ? At that level you don't need evidence, you create them...
Your personal view is wrong, and, even worse, not very smart. It does not make any sense to spend this much money on getting Iranian oil - it could be just bought much cheaper (if all sanctions and impediments were removed), and US has plenty of oil that is not being developed anyway.
>>> Why do you think no one wants to attack Syria?
Because attack presumes you need to achieve something. There's nothing in Syria that can be achieved right now that would be a desirable target. Assad is evil, islamic fundamentalists that battle him are evil too, US has no power and no political will to reform Syria and make anything good out of that mess. Neither does anybody else. That's why Assad is not being removed - because after removing him nobody knows how to clean up the mess.
Enough monkeys could take even 800-pound gorilla. In fact, it is considered a common knowledge that some bipedal monkeys regularly took 16000-pound mammoths, ate them and made dwellings out of their bones. So if I were a gorilla I wouldn't underestimate 30kg monkeys. Especially if they have advanced weaponry.
In actual life, the 800-pound gorilla is beating the shit out of monkeys, invades their villages, pushes them diplomatically, installs his lackey-monkeys in power in their jungles, and steals their resources.
And he counts any nick or scratch on his body (inflicted by the monkeys tiny hands) as worthy of the lives of 10,000 monkeys -- which he considers almost subhuman and even talks openly of "bombing them back to stone age".
Oh, and he maintains that he's the righteous and good one in all this, and it's doing it for their own good.
If you look at what happens in the jungles, all this was happening before the colonial powers came in, and is still happening when they left. So, without going too much into appropriateness of calling these people "monkeys", I'd suggest maybe the gorilla is not the biggest problem they face.
No conspiracy theory requried, as it does not require /intention/ on the part of the NSA. This can simply be Pavlov-style reinforcement: misguided ideas get amplified by rewarding the behaviour with budget increases.
Conspiracy doesn't mean aliens and Disney being frozen.
It just means people/organisations doing something together in secret.
What the NSA and partners have done is very much a conspiracy -- by definition.
As the great writer Gore Vidal once put it, "Americans have been trained by media to go into Pavlovian giggles at the mention of 'conspiracy' because for an American to believe in a conspiracy he must also believe in flying saucers or, craziest of all, that more than one person was involved in the JFK murder."
My point being they that the conditioning/feedback-loop may exist even in the case where the people involved are not aware of it. It is possible to have agents working independently, on their own compartmentalized pieces of the larger mission, each being influenced in a (apx) similar manner.Given the history of the NSA (and FBI) I would wager there probably is a significant amount of conspiracy in the department.
Money is a powerful conditioning force, and humans miss the "obvious" things that are influencing them all the time.
Not quite - finding the actual magic number that enables the backdoor would involve solving the discrete log problem for the suspicious constant in the spec. A more likely scenario is some disgruntled employee steals the number and sells it to the highest bidder.
Minor quibble (and yes I'm as outraged by this as you are) - but "rouge" means "a red powder or cream used as a cosmetic for coloring the cheeks or lips", whereas "rogue" means "a person or thing that behaves in an aberrant, faulty, or unpredictable way", which is what you mean in this comment.
You're wrong on points 5 and 6. Dual_EC_DRBG is not "unsafe" per se; it's just that the constants chosen could be precalculated so as to allow easier prediction of the resulting random numbers. This doesn't mean that the numbers the constant was calculated from are easily calculable by an attacker.
Pushes RSA to make it a Default in a key function (RNG) by giving them $10 Million.
NSA points to RSA as an early adopter and gets NIST to certify it.
Millions of systems are now protected by an RSA product that the NSA deliberately weakened.
Any sufficiently skilled rogue actor can attack virtually any business that uses these RSA products -
NSA (Cyber security Command) gets even more money to "Protect" us from said Rogue actors.
So all-in-all good investment on their part
Edit: Spelling fixed per commenter pointing out the difference between rouge and rogue. I did imply malicious actors not red-cheeked actors (not that they are mutually exclusive).