Not just that, they've also apparently come up with a mechanism for storing encryption keys for commercial encryption technologies, found a way to break SSL and hack into VPNs. This will cause every country in the world to create new encryption technologies -- unbelievably broad leak.
They are apprently using key-stealing to do this. The algorithms are mathmatically unbreakable, but that doesn’t matter if you swipe the key somehow.
You have to understand how SSL works to understand how this is possible. It is a three-step handshake. The server sends you a signed message, which you verify against the public certificates in your browser’s keystore. You then send it an message encrypted with its public key, and it replies with an encrypted message with a proposed symmetric key. You then accept the symmetric key, and from then on communicate in a symmetric cipher.
Now all the NSA has to have is the server’s private certificate, and it can read the asymmetric traffic and pick up the symmetric key as it is sent. If you have a buddy at Verisign, this is easily done.
UNBELIEVABLE YES
Perhaps Mr Snowden is not what he appears to be?