Quote from the linked Reuters article:
“They did not show their true hand,” one person briefed on the deal said of the NSA, asserting that government officials did not let on that they knew how to break the encryption.
End quote.
Hello? Hello? Anybody home? Huh? Think, RSA. Think! A government agency paying you $10M for no apparent reason or not wanting something in return? All that internal paperwork to process the payment just for fun? You didn’t really think about that? Did ya? Did ya?
This sort of thing goes back to the times when crypto machines were like typewriters from outer space, i.e. pure hardware.
A lot of smaller countries simply do not have the resources to develop their own crypto infrastructure so they buy it on the open market.
Just one example:
http://cryptome.org/jya/cryptoa2.htm
Like I said, this goes way back and is sort of known, but it’s always nice to get confirmation.
