well, by definition if the key is to be used, and to be used more than once, it cannot be kept safe. The key has to go through multiple hands on its way from the senior government official responsible for its safekeeping to the peon assigned to unlock a specific phone at a specific point in time. It could be copied at any one of those points. No amount of technology or cryptography can solve the master key problem. The social problem is the technical problem, they aren't distinct.
So you just make the three companies keep the keys then. People are out here like "a secure backdoor to encryption is impossible" and then don't even blink for the keys for root CAs which is the basis for the world's online security. Or the AWS managed S3 encryption keys.
There's a lot of of hopium in this thread for people who I think want it to be more impossible in practice than it really is.
It was never even suggested that the government would have encryption keys. The government do not have access to SSL traffic, but companies are responsible for CSAM uploaded over SSL.
If a software signing key is compromised it can be revoked and a few weeks later the risk is only to people who don't keep their OS up to date. Further, exploited compromises are detectable, especially if exploited at scale.
If the backdoor crypto key is compromised, sure they can revoke it (assuming they manage to design a competent system), but all the sensitive information up that point is now available to whoever possesses the backdoor key. Unlike the software signing case, exploitation of the compromise is likely undetectable unless the attacker reveals their knowledge somehow.
The same is true of SSL traffic to a bank though isn't it? If a crime group is intercepted encrypted traffic and saving it, then the keys are stolen, they can decrypt that data.
But opponents of the OSB claim it will make communication with your bank less secure - how?
> Microsoft, Google, Apple etc are keeping the keys that allow you to push updates secret, aren't they?
From yesterday:
> the China-Based threat actor, Storm-0558, used an acquired Microsoft account (MSA) consumer key to forge tokens to access OWA and Outlook.com. Upon identifying that the threat actor had acquired the consumer key, Microsoft performed a comprehensive technical investigation into the acquisition of the Microsoft account consumer signing key, including how it was used to access enterprise email.
