'Unhackable' data will go far

[R. A. Hettinga]

Electronics  News 
September 16, 2003

'Unhackable' data will go far 
By Andrew Woolls-King 
 
Long distance secure data transmission has moved a step closer with the transmission 
of quantum-encoded data over a distance of 100 km. Researchers claim that the 
breakthrough could make "unbreakable" secure data streams a reality within a few 
years. 

A team from Toshiba Research Europe, based in Cambridge, UK, has recently demonstrated 
a prototype system working over 100 km of fibre-optic cable. "As far as we are aware, 
this is the first demonstration of quantum cryptography over fibres longer than 100 
kilometres," says Dr Andrew Shields, who leads the Toshiba group developing the 
system. "These developments mean that the technique could be deployed in commercial 
situations within three years." 

Early adopters include organizations that need to communicate highly sensitive data 
including banks, governments and legal firms. Yet with ever increasing numbers of 
companies falling foul to the malicious activities of hackers, it is likely that the 
market for viable quantum cryptography systems will be huge. 

Until now the biggest barrier to successfully using quantum cryptography has been 
reducing the amount of random noise picked up by the receiving detector (which can be 
positioned at either end of the fibre link) due to photon scattering out of the fibre. 
Indeed the rate of encrypted photons surviving the journey along long fibres was so 
low that they were masked by noise in the actual photon detector and the entire 
transmission process failed. 

But by developing an ultra low noise detector exploiting the latest semiconductor 
technology, the Toshiba team has managed to reduce this noise problem to a viable 
level for long distance transmission. Even if the 100-km distance can't be extended, 
some form of "quantum repeater" could be developed to enable totally secure 
communications over even longer distances. 

Quantum cryptography works by using the "teleportation" of quantum states from one 
place to another using photons as the communication "medium". In practice, two users 
on a fibre-optic network form a shared security key. The secrecy of the key is 
guaranteed by exploiting the wave/particle duality of light meaning that the key does 
not "exist" in any detectable sense until the photons sent from the transmitter 
actually reach the receiver. 

Although a hacker could conceivably intercept the stream of photons en route between 
the sender and receiver, Heisenburg's uncertainty principle dictates that that it is 
physically impossible to read the datastream without disturbing its quantum states and 
thus destroying the message. 

Current encryption approaches rely on algorithm that, no matter how complex, could 
eventually be cracked. With quantum cryptography security instead becomes an 
impenetrable and intrinsic part of the data itself. 


-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga 
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Booksellers Fight Tech Slump

[R. A. Hettinga]

Apparently the only thing selling is crypto and security...

Cheers,
RAH
---



Return to Main Page 


Publishers Weekly 


Booksellers Fight Tech Slump 

by James A. Martin -- 9/15/2003 



With a few exceptions, computer book sales have gone south 


The economy is finally showing  some signs of life again. Consumer spending on 
technology is inching up. And yet, with a few exceptions, overall sales in the 
computer/technology book category continue to slump or remain flat at best, according 
to buyers for booksellers across the U.S. 

"Usually we start to see some sales improvements in  August and early fall," says Jim 
Treitman, owner of Softpro Books, a computer/technical bookseller in Centennial, Colo. 
"But so far, we've seen no improvement at all. If fact, things may have gotten a bit 
worse." 

At Stacey's, a general-interest bookstore in San Francisco, the computer/technical 
category has been hit the hardest by the recent, prolonged economic downturn, 
according to buyer Lauretta Cuadra. During the late 1990s, computer books accounted 
for 30% of Stacey's book sales, she says. Today, tech titles represent under 20% of 
store sales. One reason for the decline, explains Cuadra, is that the commercial real 
estate occupancy rates in downtown San Francisco, where Stacey's is located, have 
remained low. The lighter store traffic has, in turn, caused a noticeable dip in 
computer and other business-related book sales. 

"This recession has hit us in the middle of the forehead," adds Bill Szabo, buyer and 
co-owner of Quantum Books, a technical bookstore in Cambridge, Mass. Many of the 
store's corporate buyers have fired large numbers of employees, Szabo says, thus 
reducing demand for its computer and technical books. What's more, government 
agencies-traditionally among Quantum's best customers-have seen their budgets slashed, 
additionally dampening the store's sales. 

"Anyone who sells technical books will tell you the same thing," Szabo reports. "We're 
all suffering." 

While computer book retailers are singing the blues, there are a few upbeat notes. 
Macintosh titles, particularly those relating to Macintosh OS X, such as Mac OS X: The 
Missing Manual (O'Reilly), and graphics-related books, such as those on Adobe 
Photoshop, Web publishing, digital photography and digital video, are selling well, 
buyers report. Sales in the latter area are up partly because the costs of digital 
cameras and CD/DVD burners have dropped significantly in the past year, notes Don 
Stahl, technical book buyer for Page One Books in Albuquerque, N.Mex. 

Ebay-related titles, interestingly, are enjoying consistently brisk sales. Of the top 
10 titles for home computer users at Barnesandnoble.com in late August, seven had to 
do with selling on eBay. 

Other areas showing signs of life include books on Sun Microsystems' Java programming 
language and the Linux operating system, as well as computer security. "Cryptography 
and security is our biggest selling section today," notes Natalie Elias, manager of 
Reiters, a scientific/professional bookstore in Washington, D.C. The recent rash of 
computer viruses has helped fuel sales in this niche, she adds. 

To stay afloat, booksellers-particularly independents-are not taking anything for 
granted these days. "Before, we assumed everyone at M.I.T. knew about us," says Szabo 
of Quantum Books, which is near M.I.T. "Now, we're reaching out to the community. 
We're being aggressive in our promotions. We're making sure they know about us." 

All told, it's important for booksellers to keep things in perspective. Though sales 
for computer books are noticeably down, the figures by themselves aren't terrible, 
says Stacey's Cuadra. The tech boom of the mid-late '90s was by all accounts a high 
point for computer booksellers. "If we hadn't climbed that peak then," Cuadra adds, 
"we wouldn't think we were in a valley now." 

-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga 
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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CAFE Final Report

[R. Hirschfeld]

The CAFE Final Report is finally publicly available.  I've attached a
copy of the project's automatic reply message, which includes pointers
to the two volumes.  For those with a technical background, Volume II
is probably of more interest.

When CWI added cover material the PostScript files blew up enormously
in size, but the PDF files are of reasonable size so I recommend
downloading those instead.

--

Thank you for your inquiry about the CAFE project.  The CAFE project
ended on February 29, 1996.  A follow-up project, OPERA, whose
partners were primarily banks supporting CAFE, continued the trial of
the CAFE system on the premises of the European Commission in Brussels
and expanded it to a number of locations in Athens.

The OPERA project ended on December 31, 1997.  It demonstrated the
international aspects of the CAFE system, including cross-border
operation with currency exchange.

CAFE delivered its final report to the European Commission.  This
report has been prepared for public dissemination and includes full
specifications of the protocols developed by the project. The reports
are available in CWI's reports database. See:

   Final Report Volume I: Trials and surveys
   -> http://db.cwi.nl/rapporten/abstract.php?abstractnr=1338

   Final Report Volume II: Secure protocols and architecture
   -> http://db.cwi.nl/rapporten/abstract.php?abstractnr=1339

CAFE developed an architecture for general conditional access
applications, including a mechanism for multiple applications from
different providers to work together in a secure fashion.  The trial
was of a prepaid electronic purse application, called Xchange.  Some
of the differences between the trial system and most current
commercial electronic purse pilots are:

CAFE is entirely public-key based.
CAFE supports multiple issuers of electronic value.
CAFE supports multiple currencies, including exchange during payment.
CAFE supports anonymous payments (as an issuer option).
CAFE provides recovery of lost, stolen, and damaged cards.
CAFE supports contactless transactions via infrared wallets.
CAFE protocols are open to public scrutiny.

It should be noted that the CAFE Xchange purse was an experimental
system meant as a test of the concept and the technology, and was not
intended to compete with commercial electronic purse efforts.  A goal
of CAFE was to provide a framework for interoperability between
diverse electronic purse systems.

Ray Hirschfeld
CAFE Technical Director

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Re: OpenSSL *source* to get FIPS 140-2 Level 1 certification

[Thor Lancelot Simon]

On Mon, Sep 15, 2003 at 12:57:55PM -0400, Wei Dai wrote:
> 
> I think I may have found such a written guidance myself. It's guidance 
> G.5, dated 8/6/2003, in the latest "Implementation Guidance for FIPS 
> 140-2" on NIST's web site: 
> http://csrc.nist.gov/cryptval/140-1/FIPS1402IG.pdf. This section seems 
> especially relevant:
> 
> For level 1 Operational Environment, the software cryptographic module 
> will remain compliant with the FIPS 140-2 validation when operating on 
> any general purpose computer (GPC) provided that: 
> 
> a. the GPC uses the specified single user operating system/mode 
> specified on the validation certificate, or another compatible single 
> user operating system, and 
> 
> b. the source code of the software cryptographic module does not 
> require modification prior to recompilation to allow porting to another 
> compatible single user operating system.
> (end quote)
> 
> The key word here must be "recompilation". The language in an earlier 

Unfortunately, another key set of words is "single user".  This would seem
to significantly limit the value of a software-only certification...


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Re: OpenSSL *source* to get FIPS 140-2 Level 1 certification

[Wei Dai]

On Sat, Sep 06, 2003 at 03:33:44PM -0400, Wei Dai wrote:
> Do you have *written* guidance from NIST/CSE that your approach is ok?
> (Not the testing lab, what they say don't really count in the end, and
> neither does what NIST/CSE say verbally.) If so can you please post that
> written guidance?

I think I may have found such a written guidance myself. It's guidance 
G.5, dated 8/6/2003, in the latest "Implementation Guidance for FIPS 
140-2" on NIST's web site: 
http://csrc.nist.gov/cryptval/140-1/FIPS1402IG.pdf. This section seems 
especially relevant:

For level 1 Operational Environment, the software cryptographic module 
will remain compliant with the FIPS 140-2 validation when operating on 
any general purpose computer (GPC) provided that: 

a. the GPC uses the specified single user operating system/mode 
specified on the validation certificate, or another compatible single 
user operating system, and 

b. the source code of the software cryptographic module does not 
require modification prior to recompilation to allow porting to another 
compatible single user operating system.
(end quote)

The key word here must be "recompilation". The language in an earlier 
version of the same guidance was this:

b. the software of the cryptographic module does not require 
modification when ported (platform specific configuration modifications 
are excluded).

which left the source code issue ambiguous, but in practice NIST/CSE
did not validate any source code and told everyone verbally that source
code could not be validated. I'd love to know how the OpenSSL team got
NIST/CSE to change their mind.

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Re[2]: OT: Swiss ATM Bancomat 5.0 BM5.0

[Carsten Kuckuk]

Jose,

Unfortunately not. All you can see online is a summary at
http://www.sigs-datacom.de/sd/publications/pub_article_show.htm?&AID=1188&TABLE=sd_article

Carsten


Monday, September 15, 2003, 1:16:37 PM, you wrote:

JC> Words by Carsten Kuckuk [Tue, Sep 09, 2003 at 08:29:57PM +0200]:
>> The September/October 2003 edition of the German magazine
>> "Objektspektrum" contains an article about the development of an ATM
>> system to be used in Switzerland. (Alexander Rietsch: "Die
>> Neuentwicklung des Raiffeisen-Bankomaten", p.30-34. In passing
>> it mentions that they use Windows 2000, an MS Access database for
>> resources, MSDE for money transfer data, MSVS remote debugging,
>> C++ for speed reasons, COM, IE, and have everything connected via
>> TCP/IP networks. Unfortunately the focus of the article is not on
>> security, so all the obvious question are unanswered.
>> 

JC> Obviously. :) Is there place online we can get this?


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Announcing PGP Universal

[R. A. Hettinga]

--- begin forwarded text


Status:  U
List-ID: 
Reply-To: "PGP Universal" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sender: "PGP Universal" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "PGP Universal" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (PGP Corporation)
Subject: Announcing PGP Universal
Date: Mon, 15 Sep 2003 02:42:19 -0700

Dear PGP Customer:

We are pleased to announce the shipment of PGP(r) 
Universal.  

Over the last year, we have met with customers around the 
world to help us design a new generation of security 
products. Our goal was to take trusted PGP technology and 
deploy it in a way that would allow customers to finally 
secure all their electronic assets.

The result is PGP Universal, a new architecture and 
product family deploying proven PGP technology at the 
network level, making email security both automatic and 
requiring no user intervention. By combining a 
self-managing security architecture with the proxying of 
standard email protocols, PGP Universal enables customers 
to achieve measurable email security.  

In customer meetings it became clear PGP Universal must 
meet the needs of five groups:
  - Executives that want to comply with regulations and 
minimize risk 
  - Business units that must communicate privately and 
securely with customers and partners
  - Security groups that must enforce and measure email 
security 
  - IT organizations that don?t want to change their 
processes or integrate new technologies
  - Users who just want to do their jobs

PGP Universal was built with these needs in mind. It 
offers:
  - Automatic key generation and life cycle management
  - Central and uniform security policy control
  - Policy enforcement on both inbound and outbound email 
messages
  - Automatic and transparent operation to users
  - Automatic and transparent operation to the network
  - Easy and incremental deployment
  - Practical and cost-effective to ?secure everything?
  - Full compatibility with existing PGP Desktop products

PGP Universal is available immediately for purchase or 
customer evaluation. An FAQ and white paper with detailed 
information are available at www.pgp.com/universal. 
Information is also available at www.pgp.com, from your 
PGP sales representative, or a PGP Certified Solution 
Provider.

You have received this email because at some point in the 
past you purchased a PGP product. If you would like to 
continue receiving information from PGP Corporation, 
please subscribe at [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
If you do not reply, you will be unsubscribed from this 
list. 


Thank you for your interest in PGP products.

Sincerely,

Andrew Krcik
Vice President, Marketing and Products
PGP Corporation

--- end forwarded text


-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga 
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Re: OT: Swiss ATM Bancomat 5.0 BM5.0

[Jose Celestino]

Words by Carsten Kuckuk [Tue, Sep 09, 2003 at 08:29:57PM +0200]:
> The September/October 2003 edition of the German magazine
> "Objektspektrum" contains an article about the development of an ATM
> system to be used in Switzerland. (Alexander Rietsch: "Die
> Neuentwicklung des Raiffeisen-Bankomaten", p.30-34. In passing
> it mentions that they use Windows 2000, an MS Access database for
> resources, MSDE for money transfer data, MSVS remote debugging,
> C++ for speed reasons, COM, IE, and have everything connected via
> TCP/IP networks. Unfortunately the focus of the article is not on
> security, so all the obvious question are unanswered.
> 

Obviously. :) Is there place online we can get this?

-- 
Jose Celestino | http://xpto.org/~japc/files/japc-pgpkey.asc

"Lately, the only thing keeping me from becoming a serial killer is
my distaste for manual labor."-- Dilbert

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PGP Goes Universal, to Support S/MIME

[R. A. Hettinga]

DATE: 15/09/2003 
PGP Goes Universal, to Support S/MIME 

By Kevin Murphy 

PGP Corp says it has reached a key product milestone, and will today unveil PGP 
Universal, a system it says radically simplifies the process of encrypting email and 
attachments in enterprise-wide deployments. 

As we reported two months ago, the latest PGP product will offload the hassle of 
encrypting and signing email from the client to the network, making PGP, sometimes 
described as too complex, virtually transparent to the end user. 

Stephan Somogyi, director of products at the company, also revealed that later in the 
fourth quarter the company will add support for both X.509 certificates and S/MIME 
encryption to the software. S/MIME is in some respects a competing standard. 

PGP, for Pretty Good Privacy, is a public key cryptography method generally used in 
email. Usually, each client is responsible for generating their key pair and 
publishing their public key, so that users can encrypt mail they send them. 

This has helped slow the adoption of public key infrastructure among end users in 
general. "PKI does not lend itself to easy explanation, it does not lend itself to 
easy metaphor," Somogyi said. 

In PGP Universal, most of that work is taken care of in other parts of the network. 
The new suite has software than can be deployed internally between the client and the 
mail server, or in the demilitarized zone, or both. 

The software is responsible for automatically generating a key for users when they 
first send mail, and subsequently applying administrator-set security policies on 
encryption and signing whenever email is sent, Somogyi said. 

Companies could choose to encrypt communications based on policies such as the sender 
or recipient. Communications between the client and PGP server can be encrypted using 
SSL, so plaintext is never sent over the wire, Somogyi said. 

For external recipients, who will often not be PGP users, there are two ways of 
reading encrypted messages. The PGP server in the DMZ can act as a HTTPS server that 
serves up the (optionally password-protected) text, and offer the recipients a 
downloadable reader plug-in for subsequent messages. 

Somogyi said that upgrades to the software due later this year will allow support for 
S/MIME and the X.509 certificate standard used in PKI. 

S/MIME and OpenPGP, based on PGP, are two standards currently being pondered over in 
the Internet Engineering Task Force. PGP Corp is not convinced S/MIME is as good, but 
intends to support it anyway. 

But Somogyi said the company will have higher standards of key strength that other 
S/MIME implementations. "We will not support 40-bit S/MIME," he said. "We will treat 
these 40-bit messages as unencrypted." 

40-bit S/MIME was famously found to be susceptible to a brute-force attack, using a 
Windows screensaver program, by security consultant Bruce Schneier, now CTO of 
Counterpane Security Inc, in 1997. 

At the time, 40 bits was the default key length used in Microsoft's Outlook S/MIME 
implementation. Now, Outlook 2003 running on Windows 2000 or XP allows 40-bit or 
128-bit keys, according to Microsoft documentation. 

Terms & Conditions |Privacy Policy | Add to Favorites 
Copyright | ComputerWire 2003 

š

-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga 
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Re: quantum hype

[Ed Gerck]

martin f krafft wrote:

> So MagiQ and others claim that the technology is theoretically
> unbreakable. How so? If I have 20 bytes of data to send, and someone
> reads the photon stream before the recipient, that someone will have
> access to the 20 bytes before the recipient can look at the 20
> bytes, decide they have been "tampered" with, and alert the sender.

This is not relevant when the technology is correctly used for Q key
transmission because the sender would not be in the dark (sorry for the
double pun) for so long.

> So I use symmetric encryption and quantum cryptography for the key
> exchange... the same situation here. Maybe the recipient will be
> able to tell the sender about the junk it receives, but Mallory
> already has read some of the text being ciphered.

This should not happen in a well-designed system. The sender sends
the random key in the Q channel in such a way that compromises in
key transmission are detected before the key is used.

That said, Q cryptography is something else and should not be confused
with Q key distribution.

Cheers,
Ed Gerck


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