Microsoft Passport fades away
From Computerworld: Microsoft Scales Back Passport Ambitions Microsoft's decision to reposition its .Net Passport identification system comes as Monster.com is dropping support for the authentication service. http://www.computerworld.com/newsletter/0,4902,96838,00.html?nlid=PM -- Jerry - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Are new passports [an] identity-theft risk?
R.A. Hettinga wrote: http://worldnetdaily.com/news/printer-friendly.asp?ARTICLE_ID=41030 An engineer and RFID expert with Intel claims there is little danger of unauthorized people reading the new passports. Roy Want told the newssite: It is actually quite hard to read RFID at a distance, saying a person's keys, bag and body interfere with the radio waves. Who was it that pointed out that radio waves don't interfere, rather, receivers can't discriminate? Absolutely. I'd add that while it's *currently* hard to read at a distance, passports typically have a lifetime of 10 years and I'd be very surprised if the technology wasn't significantly better five years out. William - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Financial identity is *dangerous*? (was re: Fake companies, real money)
| What machine, attached to a network, using a web browser, and | sending and receiving mail, would you trust? | | I would suggest pursuing work along the lines of a Virtual Machine Monitor | (VMM) like VMWare. This way you can run a legacy OS, even Windows, | alongside a high security simplified OS which handles your transactions. Hal, I'm pretty sure that you are answering the question Why did Microsoft buy Connectix?[1] -- the answer was not, in other words, to screw Mac OS X users but to break the conundrum Ballmer finds himself in where the road forks towards (1) fix the security problem but lose backward compatibility, or (2) keep the backward compatibility but never fix the problem. His Board would prefer (2), the annuity of locked-in users, but it forces a bet that software liability never happens. Fixing the problem, for which the calls grow more strident daily, puts the desktop platform into play even more than it is now as it asks the users (who, having lost compatibility, thus have nothing to lose) to marry Redmond a second time. A VM-cures-all strategy is then an attempt to avoid having to choose between (1) and (2) by breaking backward compatibility for new things but bridging the old things with a magic box that both preserves the annuity revenue stream from locked-in users while it keeps the liability bar at bay. Or so I think. --dan [1] http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtualpc/previous/default.mspx - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Patriot Act redux?
http://news.com.com/2102-1071_3-5414087.html?tag=st.util.print Patriot Act redux? By Declan McCullagh http://news.com.com/Patriot+Act+redux/2010-1071_3-5414087.html Story last modified October 18, 2004, 4:00 AM PDT With Election Day fast approaching, it was only a matter of time before the usual congressional shenanigans that typically punctuate the political season. This time, politicians appear to have seized on what could be called the Patriot Act strategy, drafting antiterrorism legislation in secret and then ramming it through the Senate and House of Representatives with minimal debate. Then it's back to the home districts to boast how they protected voters from the bad guys. The vehicles chosen for this strategy are two bills described as being inspired by the 9/11 Commission's report, a politically potent text that's become a best-selling book. The Senate and House have approved their own versions of the legislation, and negotiators are now meeting privately to decide on the final draft. Early indications are not promising. While portions of the massive legislation are no doubt praiseworthy, other important sections--especially those envisioning stuffing more information into government databases--deserve special scrutiny from privacy hawks. Both the House and Senate bills coerce state governments into creating what critics are calling a national ID card. Because the House version is nearly three times as long, its authors had more room to promote private agendas. One section anticipates storing the lifetime travel history of each foreign national or United States citizen into a database for the convenience of government officials. It mentions passports, but there's nothing that would preclude recording the details of trips that Americans take inside the United States. President Bush would be required to create a secure information sharing network to exchange data among law enforcement, military and spy agencies. Aside from a bland assurance that civil liberties will be protected, there are zero details on what databases will be vacuumed in or what oversight will take place. A second network would be created by the first person to get the new job of national intelligence director. That network must provide immediate access to information in databases of federal law enforcement agencies and the intelligence community that is necessary to identify terrorists. It hardly needs to be said that snaring terrorists is what our government should be doing. But it's not clear that the House bill is a step in the right direction. Jim Dempsey, executive director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, hopes that the aides negotiating the final bill end up adopting the Senate language instead. It also would create an information-sharing network--while requiring that Congress receive semiannual reports on how the network is being used. There are dozens if not hundreds of government programs under way to do just that (already), Dempsey warns. They are fragmented; they are overlapping. They are occurring outside of any framework of oversight. Still, the Senate bill is no prize. A last-minute amendment added by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., would require the Department of Homeland Security to create an integrated screening system inside the United States. McCain envisions erecting physical checkpoints, dubbed screening points, near subways, airports, bus stations, train stations, federal buildings, telephone companies, Internet hubs and any other critical infrastructure facility deemed vulnerable to terrorist attacks. Secretary Tom Ridge would appear to be authorized to issue new federal IDs--with biometric identifiers--that Americans could be required to show at checkpoints. Both the House and Senate bills coerce state governments into creating what critics are calling a national ID card. Under the proposals, federal agencies will accept only licenses and state ID cards that comply with specific to-be-established standards--a requirement that would affect anyone who wants to get a U.S. passport, obtain Social Security benefits, or even wander into a federal courthouse. That's why Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the Cato Institute, is no fan of either bill. They say that if we just put appropriate rules and restrictions in place, everything will be fine, Harper said. But of course those rules and restrictions will drop away over the years or if there are new terrorist attacks. They say, 'Of course lion-taming is safe. They're our friends.' But then one day the lion grabs you by the neck and drags you off the stage. A few other courageous Washingtonians have raised similar concerns. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, warned last week that the House bill will not make America safer (but will definitely) make us less free. And 25 former senior officials from the FBI, CIA and military have sent a letter to Congress indicating that the 9/11 Commission's
Re: Crypto blogs?
On 18 Oct 2004, at 12:49 PM, Hal Finney wrote: Does anyone have pointers to crypto related weblogs? Bruce Schneier recently announced that Crypto-Gram would be coming out incrementally in blog form at http://www.schneier.com/blog/. I follow Ian Grigg's Financial Cryptography blog, http://www.financialcryptography.com/. Recently I learned about Adam Shostack's http://www.emergentchaos.com/, although it seems to be more security than crypto. Any other good ones? Matt Hamrick's Cryptonomicon.net is good. There are also my PGP CTO corner articles at http://www.pgp.com/resources/ctocorner/. Jon - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
How to store the car-valued bearer bond? (was Financial identity...)
Aaron Whitehouse wrote: None. But a machine that had one purpose in life: to manage the bearer bond, that could be trusted to a reasonable degree. The trick is to stop thinking of the machine as a general purpose computer and think of it as a platform for one single application. Then secure that machine/OS/ stack/application combination. Oh, and make it small enough to fit in the pocket, put a display *and* a keypad on it, and tell the user not to lose it. iang How much difference is there, practically, between this and using a smartcard credit card in an external reader with a keypad? Aside from the weight of the 'computer' in your pocket... Theoretically, there may not be much difference, depending on where the theory starts... Practically there are a bunch of differences, which are more or less issues, depending. 1. The data store (a.k.a. the smart card) is separated from the IO package. Is this an advantage or a disadvantage? For the most part it gives the user 2 tokens to worry about, the expense of an additional interface, and more mass, as you point out. I can't quite see any offsetting advantage myself in all that over one box that does the lot. So that's a minus. 2. The data store is in some sense secure. If it's got a car-valued bearer bond on it, that's probably not secure enough. It might give some security in the event of loss, but so would a combined package with some other password on it. It is a marginal security improvement over a single purpose non-smart package, and thus would have a primary benefit in marketing (see Blue). It's a plus, but a small plus, as a single-purpose package could just build in a smart card if it so desired. 3. The smart card interface is not good. It has to be taken out of your trusted reader and put in someone else's trusted reader. Bad news. So someone else's trusted reader tells you it is paying you dividends on your bond, when in fact it is replacing the bond with a mickey mouse loyalty coupon. Getting around that disadvantage costs systems operators a bundle of money and restrictions. This makes for a huge minus. 4. The smart card interface, part 2. In practice, smart card readers are an example of historical detritus. We all said next year is the year of the smartcard in 1995, and it still is. In practice, the interfaces we want on our bearer bond hardware token are these: 802.11x, ethernet, bluetooth, IR, ... in that approximate order, all with IP layered over and our real hot bearer transfer protocol, and not some hokey old telco thing. The smart card interface is another huge minus, because it means that the infrastructure is all specialised, the protocols are all closed, and the system is all controlled at some level or other, which means some big fella has to dig deep in the pockets to finance it. Score card so far: 2 big minuses, one small minus, and a small plus. That would seem to me a more realistic expectation on consumers who are going to have, before too long, credit cards that fit that description and quite possibly the readers to go with them. Next year is the year of the smart card! In practice, that advantage is just a rationalisation. We can't use any of those tokens to store your bearer bond. If we are going to ask someone to store a bearer bond, we have to give that person the token. Which means we can start with a blank sheet of paper, we don't need to use any smart card patriotism to justify your choices. iang - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Are new passports [an] identity-theft risk?
On Fri, Oct 22, 2004 at 11:01:16AM -0400, Whyte, William wrote: | | R.A. Hettinga wrote: | | http://worldnetdaily.com/news/printer-friendly.asp?ARTICLE_ID=41030 | |An engineer and RFID expert with Intel claims there is | little danger of | unauthorized people reading the new passports. Roy Want | told the newssite: | It is actually quite hard to read RFID at a distance, | saying a person's | keys, bag and body interfere with the radio waves. | | Who was it that pointed out that radio waves don't | interfere, rather, receivers can't discriminate? | | Absolutely. I'd add that while it's *currently* hard to | read at a distance, passports typically have a lifetime | of 10 years and I'd be very surprised if the technology | wasn't significantly better five years out. 5 years? I don't think we have that long. The technology will mature *very* rapidly if Virginia makes their driver's licenses RFID-enabled, or if the US goes ahead with the passports. Why? Because there will be a stunning amount of money to be stolen by not identity thieves, but real thieves. Imagine sitting with a laptop, a good antenna, and some software outside a metro station in Virginia. Or an upscale restaurant in Adams-Morgan, reading off the addresses of those who will be away from home for the next 3 hours. Adam - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
