cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/11349801
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The federal government of Canada will help to fund “a sovereign broadband backbone that connects Canadians from coast to coast to coast, with more direct and secure links to Europe and Asia,” Prime Minister Mark Carney announced.
A “broadband backbone” is the high-capacity core of the internet network that carries traffic between cities and countries. Speaking with reporters later, Mr. Carney said the backbone would also include connections to the Arctic.
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Representatives for Canada’s major telecom companies supported Mr. Carney’s announcement … As Mr. Carney’s government continues to seek alternatives to reduce dependence on the United States, calls have grown to develop more networking infrastructure that would avoid routing Canadian data through U.S. internet exchanges, thereby exposing that data to potential surveillance.
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Researchers at the University of Toronto and York University studying the journey taken by data between two points in Canada have found that, among their data sets, about a quarter of those journeys routed through American interchanges, exposing that information to access by the U.S. National Security Agency.
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Mr. Carney did not provide further details about the broadband project. However, discussions about the ownership and financing model for the project are currently being held between telecom companies and the Major Projects Office, according to two sources with knowledge of the matter.
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How a “Backdoor” in HTTPS Can Occur
Because HTTPS relies on the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol to encrypt data, any backdoor must target the underlying cryptography, implementation, or trust infrastructure:
Weakened Cryptographic Standards: The US National Security Agency (NSA) has a documented history of attempting to introduce subtle flaws into global encryption standards. A prime historical example is the Dual_EC_DRBG random number generator. The NSA pushed for its inclusion in NIST standards in the mid-2000s, which later revealed a mathematical backdoor allowing anyone with the correct key to decrypt the resulting traffic.
Compromised Certificate Authorities (CAs): HTTPS relies on a chain of trust managed by Certificate Authorities. These entities issue the digital certificates that verify a website’s identity. If a US-based CA were legally coerced (via classified directives like National Security Letters) to hand over its root keys or issue fraudulent certificates, an agency could execute a Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attack to decrypt HTTPS traffic seamlessly.
Imposed Implementation Flaws:
Backdoors are often engineered directly into commercial hardware or software rather than the open-source protocol. Government agencies can exploit or intentionally plant vulnerabilities in proprietary routers, firewalls, and operating systems that handle HTTPS termination, allowing them to capture data right before it is encrypted or after it is decrypted.
Key Interception (PRISM): Revelations from 2013 leaked documents showed that under programs like PRISM, the US government bypassed the need to break HTTPS encryption entirely by compelling major tech companies to hand over data directly from their servers (at rest), rendering transit encryption irrelevant.