Expert Says NSA Have Backdoors Built Into Intel And AMD Processors

[joshcryer]

33. I'm amused by the idea that it was a maybe a 'bug.'

From your linked article:

More likely, it might be merely an overlooked feature left over from a period of early development, some say.

You don't have an AES key back door during development.

Indeed, the paper even says this:

One could possibly argue that the backdoor we discovered is a bug or something overlooked by the developers. However, this is not the case as we performed intensive investigation into this problem and found proof that the backdoor was deliberately inserted and even used as a part of the overall security scheme. The backdoor feature was designed as a part of the JTAG security protection mechanism and traces can be found in the Actel’s Libero FPGA design software. Anyone with this free software installed on their Microsoft Windows machine can go to the Search option in the Start menu and search for one of the fuse names taken from Actel generated STAPL file. For example, search for the word ULUWE in all files. This will return all STAPL files together with templates and algorithm description files. Inside some of those files there is a proof of the designed backdoor feature.