It was last October that the Washington Post mentioned about leaked slides from the NSA’s top secret MUSCULAR data interception program, sharing details on how the NSA was able to step in and intercept data from Google’s cloud servers through an exploitation in an SSL gap. That particular slide has proven to raise a fair amount of controversy, especially so where Google employees are concerned. The comment read, “SSL added and removed here :)”, and did not go endear itself to Google employees. Of course, revenge is a dish best served cold, and Google has not forgotten about that, having hit back in a latest Easter Egg in their latest email encryption plug-in.
Apparently, the recently released source code for Google’s new End-To-End email encryption plugin which supposedly increases encryption for emails that are sent and received on the Chrome browser, did carry a jibe against the NSA and their attempts to pilfer Google’s servers.
The NSA is not expected to share a comment on this Easter Egg from Google, but it just goes to show how Google was smarting from what had happened in the past. What do you think of this particular game of tit-for-tat? Is it going to see an end anytime soon?