RE: Intel plans crypto-walled-garden for x86
I'd call this news announcement about Intel creating a run known good code facility about as credible as the joke that Otellini told his minions to go buy a copy of McAfee, and they didn't hear the copy of part. Noone will tolerate an Intel-moderated walled garden. Only Apple has customers with a bad enough case of stockholm syndrome to tolerate that sort of nonsense. Ian. -Original Message- From: owner-cryptogra...@metzdowd.com on behalf of Peter Gutmann Sent: Wed 15-Sep-10 2:03 AM To: cryptography@metzdowd.com; g...@toad.com Subject: Re: Intel plans crypto-walled-garden for x86 John Gilmore g...@toad.com writes: Let me guess -- to run anything but Windows, you'll soon have to jailbreak even laptops and desktop PC's? Naah, we're perfectly safe, like every other similar attempt after 5-10 years of effort and several hundred million dollars down the drain it'll come to nothing. I guess that's one silver lining of the corollary to We can't secure PCs against the bad guys, which is We can't 'secure' them against their owners either (with the rider ... although we can cause a lot of cost and inconvenience in trying). Peter. - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to majord...@metzdowd.com - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to majord...@metzdowd.com
RE: non 2048-bit keys
Samuel Neves wrote: If an attacker creating a special-purpose machine to break your keys is a realistic scenario, why are you even considering keys of that size? What's the threat model? If the set of possible actors includes first world SIGINT agencies, then yes, it is a reasonable assumption that a special configuration of system has been created to factor keys. Think IBM or pre-acquisition SGI or pre-acquisition Sun as a supplier of such hardware, scaled up way beyond the configurations you'd get in the marketing literature (tens of thousands of cores, terabytes of physical RAM, low-range nine-figure price tags). But as such an attack would likely cost millions of dollars per key, because the time to solution would be weeks or even months, then they'll only be using it as a last resort. As Peter correctly pointed out, there are so many other viable threat vectors which are available, especially human-in-the-loop ones, which would likely be exhausted before that solution was tried. For non-government level attacks, I agree that such a scenario is unrealistic. Ian. - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to majord...@metzdowd.com
RE: Destroying confidential information from database
What I don't know is how to securely erase information from a database. I cannot assume that the vendor solves this matter, anyone have a clue? I'd say your assumption is valid. This is not to disrespect the database vendors, but to point out that their risk modelling is generally significantly looser than that which would be accepted by someone who worries about secure data erasure on storage media. I'd strongly suggest erasing the disk on which the database is stored, using whatever mechanism meets your security needs (ie. From a DoD secure erase right up to the full physical destruction of the media). Also consider erasure of any areas of the disk where data might have been cached, including but not limited to working tables and swap. Ian. - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to majord...@metzdowd.com
RE: Obama's secure PDA
Perry wrote: pgut...@cs.auckland.ac.nz (Peter Gutmann) writes: I wonder what a classified USB cable is. Perhaps it's an unclassified USB cable with the little three-prong USB logo blacked out by the censors. I would imagine it is a tempest shielded cable, and appropriately altered connectors. It would definitely be shielded, but I doubt it's TEMPEST qualified at that price point. I suspect it's just a USB cable with a keyed connector, to enforce red/black sep in this somewhat atypical environment (eg. section 5.4.6.1.1.2 of MIL-HDBK-232A) Ian. - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to majord...@metzdowd.com
