type subsidiary industry encryption and network security founded 1982 1 2 founder ron rivest adi shamir leonard adleman 1 headquarters bedford massachusetts united states key people amit yoran president 3 mark quigley senior vp coo 4 products encryption and network security software number of employees 1 319 as of 2007 parent dell emc infrastructure solutions group website www.rsa.com rsa security llc 5 formerly rsa security inc. and doing business as rsa is an american computer and network security company . rsa was named after the initials of its co founders ron rivest adi shamir and len adleman after whom the rsa public key cryptography algorithm was also named . 6 among its products include the rsa bsafe cryptography libraries and the securid authentication token . rsa is known for allegedly incorporating backdoors developed by the nsa in its products . 7 8 it also organizes the annual rsa conference an information security conference . founded as an independent company in 1982 rsa security was acquired by emc corporation in 2006 for us 2.1 billion and operated as a division within emc . 9 when emc was acquired by dell technologies in 2016 10 rsa became a subsidiary of dell emc infrastructure solutions group . 11 rsa is based in bedford massachusetts with regional headquarters in bracknell uk and singapore and numerous international offices . 12 contents 1 history 1.1 securid security breach 1.2 relationship with nsa 1.3 alleged nsa dual ec drbg backdoor 2 products 3 see also 4 references 5 external links history edit ron rivest adi shamir and leonard adleman who developed the rsa encryption algorithm in 1977 founded rsa data security in 1982 . 1 2 in 1995 rsa sent a handful of people across the hall to found digital certificates international better known as verisign . the company then called security dynamics acquired rsa data security in july 1996 and dynasoft ab in 1997 . in january 1997 it proposed the first of the des challenges which led to the first public breaking of a message based on the data encryption standard . in february 2001 it acquired xcert international inc. a privately held company that developed and delivered digital certificate based products for securing e business transactions . in may 2001 it acquired 3 g international inc. a privately held company that developed and delivered smart card and biometric authentication products . in august 2001 it acquired securant technologies inc. a privately held company that produced cleartrust an identity management product . in december 2005 it acquired cyota a privately held israeli company specializing in online security and anti fraud solutions for financial institutions . 13 in april 2006 it acquired passmark security . on september 14 2006 rsa stockholders approved the acquisition of the company by emc corporation for 2.1 billion . 9 14 15 in 2007 rsa acquired valyd software a hyderabad based indian company specializing in file and data security . in 2009 rsa launched the rsa share project . 16 as part of this project some of the rsa bsafe libraries were made available for free . to promote the launch rsa ran a programming competition with a us 10 000 first prize . 17 in 2011 rsa introduced a new cybercrime intelligence service designed to help organizations identify computers information assets and identities compromised by trojans and other online attacks . 18 on september 7 2016 rsa was acquired by and became a subsidiary of dell emc infrastructure solutions group through the acquisition of emc corporation by dell technologies in a cash and stock deal led by michael dell . securid security breach edit rsa securid security tokens . main article securid march 2011 system compromise on march 17 2011 rsa disclosed an attack on its two factor authentication products . the attack was similar to the sykipot attacks the july 2011 sk communications hack and the nightdragon series of attacks . 19 rsa called it an advanced persistent threat . 20 relationship with nsa edit rsa security campaigned against the clipper chip backdoor in the so called crypto wars with this poster being the most well remembered icon of that debate . rsa s relationship with the nsa has changed over the years . reuter s joseph menn 21 and cybersecurity analyst jeffrey carr 22 have noted that the two once had an adversarial relationship . in its early years rsa and its leaders were prominent advocates of strong cryptography for public use while nsa and the bush and clinton administrations sought to prevent its proliferation . for almost 10 years i ve been going toe to toe with these people at fort meade . the success of this company rsa is the worst thing that can happen to them . to them we re the real enemy we re the real target . we have the system that they re most afraid of . if the u.s. adopted rsa as a standard you would have a truly international interoperable unbreakable easy to use encryption technology . and all those things together are so synergistically threatening to the n.s.a. s interests that it s driving them into a frenzy . rsa president james bidzos june 1994 23 in the mid 1990s rsa and bidzos led a fierce public campaign against the clipper chip an encryption chip with a backdoor that would allow the u.s. government to decrypt communications . the clinton administration pressed telecommunications companies to use the chip in their devices and relaxed export restrictions on products that used it . such restrictions had prevented rsa security from selling its software abroad . rsa joined civil libertarians and others in opposing the clipper chip by among other things distributing posters with a foundering sailing ship and the words sink clipper 24 rsa security also created the des challenges to show that the widely used des encryption was breakable by well funded entities like the nsa . the relationship shifted from adversarial to cooperative after bidzos stepped down as ceo in 1999 according to victor chan who led rsa s department engineering until 2005 when i joined there were 10 people in the labs and we were fighting the nsa . it became a very different company later on . 24 for example rsa was reported to have accepted 10 million from the nsa in 2004 in a deal to use the nsa designed dual ec drbg random number generator in their bsafe library despite many indications that dual ec drbg was both of poor quality and possibly backdoored . 25 26 rsa security later released a statement about the dual ec drbg kleptographic backdoor we made the decision to use dual ec drbg as the default in bsafe toolkits in 2004 in the context of an industry wide effort to develop newer stronger methods of encryption . at that time the nsa had a trusted role in the community wide effort to strengthen not weaken encryption . this algorithm is only one of multiple choices available within bsafe toolkits and users have always been free to choose whichever one best suits their needs . we continued using the algorithm as an option within bsafe toolkits as it gained acceptance as a nist standard and because of its value in fips compliance . when concern surfaced around the algorithm in 2007 we continued to rely upon nist as the arbiter of that discussion . when nist issued new guidance recommending no further use of this algorithm in september 2013 we adhered to that guidance communicated that recommendation to customers and discussed the change openly in the media . rsa the security division of emc 27 in march 2014 it was reported by reuters that rsa had also adapted the extended random standard championed by nsa . later cryptanalysis showed that extended random did not add any security and was rejected by the prominent standards group internet engineering task force . extended random did however make nsa s backdoor for dual ec drbg tens of thousands of times faster to use for attackers with the key to the dual ec drbg backdoor presumably only nsa because the extended nonces in extended random made part of the internal state of dual ec drbg easier to guess . only rsa security s java version was hard to crack without extended random since the caching of dual ec drbg output in e.g. rsa security s c programming language version already made the internal state fast enough to determine . and indeed rsa security only implemented extended random in its java implementation of dual ec drbg . 28 29 alleged nsa dual ec drbg backdoor edit from 2004 to 2013 rsa shipped security software bsafe toolkit and data protection manager that included a default cryptographically secure pseudorandom number generator dual ec drbg that was later suspected to contain an alleged secret national security agency kleptographic backdoor . the alleged backdoor could have made data encrypted with these tools much easier to break for the nsa which allegedly had the secret private key to the backdoor . scientifically speaking the alleged backdoor employs kleptography and is essentially an instance of the diffie hellman kleptographic attack published in 1997 by adam young and moti yung . 30 rsa security employees should have been aware at least that dual ec drbg might contain a backdoor . three employees were members of the ansi x9f1 tool standards and guidelines group to which dual ec drbg had been submitted for consideration in the early 2000s . 31 the possibility that the random number generator could contain a backdoor was first raised in an ansi x9 meeting according to john kelsey a co author of the nist sp 800 90a standard that contains dual ec drbg . 32 in january 2005 two employees of the cryptography company certicom they were also members of the x9f1 group wrote a patent application that described a backdoor for dual ec drbg identical to the nsa one . 33 the patent application also described three ways to neutralize the backdoor . two of these ensuring that two arbitrary elliptic curve points p and q used in dual ec drbg are independently chosen and a smaller output length was added to the standard as an option though nsa s backdoored version of p and q and large output length remained as the standard s default option . kelsey said he knew of no implementers who actually generated their own non backdoored p and q 32 and there have been no reports of implementations using the smaller outlen . nevertheless nist included dual ec drbg in its 2006 nist sp 800 90a standard with the default settings enabling the backdoor largely at the behest of nsa officials 26 who had cited rsa security s early use of the random number generator as an argument for its inclusion . 24 the standard did also not fix the unrelated to the backdoor problem that the csprng was slightly predictable which gj steen had pointed out earlier in 2006 and which lead gj steen to call dual ec drbg not cryptographically sound . 34 ansi standard group members and microsoft employees dan shumow and niels ferguson made a public presentation about the backdoor in 2007 . 35 commenting on shumow and ferguson s presentation prominent security researcher and cryptographer bruce schneier called the possible nsa backdoor rather obvious and wondered why nsa bothered pushing to have dual ec drbg included when the general poor quality and possible backdoor would ensure that nobody would ever use it . 26 there does not seem to have been a general awareness that rsa security had made it the default in some of its products in 2004 until the snowden leak . 26 in september 2013 the new york times drawing on the snowden leaks revealed that the nsa worked to insert vulnerabilities into commercial encryption systems it systems networks and endpoint communications devices used by targets as part of the bullrun program