6. Conclusion

Despite a partial liberalization of cryptography in terms of its use, in reality this field of knowledge remains highly sensitive for governments. It still falls under the purview of state sovereignty and intelligence. For governments to maintain control over this technology—which empowers citizens and other nations to protect themselves—it is essential to preserve an asymmetry of knowledge. The principle of the backdoor relies on knowledge possessed by one party to the exclusion of all others. This competitive edge requires access to non-public knowledge. This necessitates control over or direction of research and knowledge.

To date, open research on mathematical backdoors is virtually nonexistent. In this chapter, we have primarily, but without loss of generality, addressed the case of symmetric cryptography, which is used to encrypt large volumes of data or communications....