Snowden: Spy Agencies ‘Screwed All of Us’ in Hacking Crypto Keys

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden didn’t mince words during a Reddit Ask Me Anything session on Monday when he said the NSA and the British spy agency GCHQ had “screwed all of us” when it hacked into the Dutch firm Gemalto to steal cryptographic keys used in billions of mobile SIM cards worldwide.

“When the NSA and GCHQ compromised the security of potentially billions of phones (3g/4g encryption relies on the shared secret resident on the sim),” Snowden wrote in the AMA, “they not only screwed the manufacturer, they screwed all of us, because the only way to address the security compromise is to recall and replace every SIM sold by Gemalto.”

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