Re: Simson Garfinkel analyses Skype - Open Society Institute
Adam Shostack wrote: I hate arguing by analogy, but: VOIP is a perfectly smooth system. It's lack of security features mean there isn't even a ridge to trip you up as you wiretap. Skype has some ridge. It may turn out that it's very very low, but its there. Even if that's just the addition of an openssl decrypt line to a reconstruct shell script. In that case, the value of 'better' is vanishingly small, but it will still take an attacker at least 5 minutes to figure that out. I would contend that a false sense of security is worse than no security at all. Someone's behavior may be different if they are wrongfully assuming that their communications are encrypted by what they believe is strong encryption when if fact it may be very very low. -- Mark Allen Earnest Lead Systems Programmer Emerging Technologies The Pennsylvania State University smime.p7s Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
Re: Dell to Add Security Chip to PCs
Trei, Peter wrote: It could easily be leveraged to make motherboards which will only run 'authorized' OSs, and OSs which will run only 'authorized' software. And you, the owner of the computer, will NOT neccesarily be the authority which gets to decide what OS and software the machine can run. If you 'take ownership' as you put it, the internal keys and certs change, and all of a sudden you might not have a bootable computer anymore. Goodbye Linux. Goodbye Freeware. Goodbye independent software development. It would be a very sad world if this comes to pass. Yes it would, many governments are turning to Linux and other freeware. Many huge companies make heavy use of Linux and and freeware, suddenly losing this would have a massive effect on their bottom line and possibly enough to impact the economy as a whole. Independent software developers are a significant part of the economy as well, and most politicians do not want to associate themselves with the concept of hurting small business. Universities and other educational institutions will fight anything that resembles what you have described tooth and nail. To think that this kind of technology would be mandated by a government is laughable. Nor do I believe there will be any conspiracy on the part of ISPs to require to in order to get on the Internet. As it stands now most people are running 5+ year old computer and windows 98/me, I doubt this is going to change much because for most people, this does what they want (minus all the security vulnerabilities, but with NAT appliances those are not even that big a deal). There is no customer demand for this technology to be mandated, there is no reason why an ISP or vendor would want to piss off significant percentages of their clients in this way. The software world is becoming MORE open. Firefox and Openoffice are becoming legitimate in the eyes of government and businesses, Linux is huge these days, and the open source development method is being talked about in business mags, board rooms, and universities everywhere. The government was not able to get the Clipper chip passed and that was backed with the horror stories of rampant pedophilia, terrorism, and organized crime. Do you honestly believe they will be able to destroy open source, linux, independent software development, and the like with just the fear of movie piracy, mp3 sharing, and such? Do you really think they are willing to piss off large sections of the voting population, the tech segment of the economy, universities, small businesses, and the rest of the world just because the MPAA and RIAA don't like customers owning devices they do not control? It is entirely possibly that a machine like you described will be built, I wish them luck because they will need it. It is attempted quite often and yet history shows us that there is really no widespread demand for iOpeners, WebTV, and their ilk. I don't see customers demanding this, therefor there will probably not be much of a supply. Either way, there is currently a HUGE market for general use PCs that the end user controls, so I imagine there will always be companies willing to supply them. My primary fear regarding TCPA is the remote attestation component. I can easily picture Microsoft deciding that they do not like Samba and decide to make it so that Windows boxes simply cannot communicate with it for domain, filesystem, or authentication purposes. All they need do is require that the piece on the other end be signed by Microsoft. Heck they could render http agent spoofing useless if they decide to make it so that only IE could connect to ISS. Again though, doing so would piss off a great many of their customers, some of who are slowly jumping ship to other solutions anyway. -- Mark Allen Earnest Lead Systems Programmer Emerging Technologies The Pennsylvania State University smime.p7s Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
Re: encrypted tapes (was Re: Papers about Algorithm hiding ?)
Steven M. Bellovin wrote: The bigger issue, though, is more subtle: keeping track of the keys is non-trivial. These need to be backed up, too, and kept separate from (but synchronized with) the tapes. Worse yet, they need to be kept secure. That may mean storing the keys with a different escrow company. A loss of either piece,the tape or the key, renders the backup useless. Basically, expensive or not, security is very hard to get right. When you look at Choicepoint, Bank of America, and Citigroup (not to mention universities and smaller businesses) they have little to no incentive to keep your personal data secure. YOU bear the cost of data compromise, not them. The worst they get is some bad publicity and only if it affects CA residents, otherwise it can be kept quiet. The threat of bad publicity does not mean much when next week your compromise due to bad security will be forgotten as the media switches to the next one. As it stands today, the cost/benefit analysis easily directs them away from taking strong measures to protect customer's financial data. Doing so is time consuming, opens up potential for problems, and gets them next to nothing in return. -- Mark Allen Earnest Lead Systems Programmer Emerging Technologies The Pennsylvania State University Lt Commander Centre County Sheriff's Office Search and Rescue KB3LYB smime.p7s Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
Re: [Clips] Does Phil Zimmermann need a clue on VoIP?
I've personally designed and deployed many PKI solutions for large corporations for all sorts of security applications ranging from remote VPN access to wireless LAN security, and I can attest that the technology is simple, scalable, and reliable. *yawn* Yet another person who confuses PK with PKI. Almost NOBODY has ever done PKI right. The I is the part everyone conveniently forgets when they claim otherwise. -- Mark Allen Earnest Lead Systems Programmer Emerging Technologies The Pennsylvania State University KB3LYB smime.p7s Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
Re: The summer of PKI love
James A. Donald wrote: -- From: Stephan Neuhaus [EMAIL PROTECTED] So, the optimism of the article's author aside, where *do* we stand on PKI deployment? PKI's deployment to identify ssl servers is near one hundred percent. PKI's deployment to sign and secure email, and to identify users, is near zero and seems unlikely to change. PGP has substantially superior penetration. I would rank it closer to 0% myself. Don't get me wrong, we have plenty of PK deployment with SSL servers, just no I. Anyone doing revocation checking? How do you even do it? CRL? Delta CRL? OSCP? Do any browsers really support these things? For those that do does any user actually know how to do it? PKI is a massive undertaking that many seem to confuse with just public key cryptography. Public key crypto is just one component of PKI, and frankly I know VERY few groups that are actually doing PKI and doing it right. What we have are a couple dozen certificate authorities that were deemed trustworthy by Microsoft that do not pop up warnings, and the rest that do pop up warnings that most people blissfully ignore. HTTPS is really good for encryption, absolutely sucks in practice for trust. -- Mark Allen Earnest Lead Systems Programmer Emerging Technologies The Pennsylvania State University KB3LYB smime.p7s Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
