Close
  • Latest News
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Big Data and Analytics
  • Cloud
  • Networking
  • Cybersecurity
  • Applications
  • IT Management
  • Storage
  • Sponsored
  • Mobile
  • Small Business
  • Development
  • Database
  • Servers
  • Android
  • Apple
  • Innovation
  • Blogs
  • PC Hardware
  • Reviews
  • Search Engines
  • Virtualization
Read Down
Sign in
Close
Welcome!Log into your account
Forgot your password?
Read Down
Password recovery
Recover your password
Close
Search
Logo
Logo
  • Latest News
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Big Data and Analytics
  • Cloud
  • Networking
  • Cybersecurity
  • Applications
  • IT Management
  • Storage
  • Sponsored
  • Mobile
  • Small Business
  • Development
  • Database
  • Servers
  • Android
  • Apple
  • Innovation
  • Blogs
  • PC Hardware
  • Reviews
  • Search Engines
  • Virtualization
More
    Home Cybersecurity
    • Cybersecurity

    RSA Panel: Cryptography Cant Foil Human Weakness

    By
    Mark Hachman
    -
    February 24, 2004
    Share
    Facebook
    Twitter
    Linkedin

      SAN FRANCISCO—Enhanced security can solve many issues, but it cant improve the thing that sits between the keyboard and the chair—the user—a cryptographers panel concluded Tuesday.

      The panel, a staple of the RSA Conference here, invited four of the industrys luminaries on stage with Bruce Schneier, author and chief technology officer at Counterpane Internet Security, to discuss the evolution of cryptography. The discussion soon turned to recent failures in information security, however, including the recent leak of some of Microsoft Corp.s source code and the knotty security problem of social engineering.

      Each panelist—Whitfield Diffie, chief security officer at Sun Microsystems Inc.; Paul Kocher, president and chief scientist at Cryptography Research Inc.; Ron Rivest, Viterbi professor of computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Adi Shamir, professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel—came to the panel with his own view of security priorities. Rivest, for example, was concerned with the policy of security., Diffie, on the other hand, said the industry was shaping up for a battle over DRM.

      Increasingly, the panelists said, security experts challenges have had less to do with the intricacies of cryptosystems used to wrap code than the real-world intricacies of standards and government guidelines. Rivest cited the case of Diebold Systems Inc.s electronic voting machine code, which was found on the Internet and quickly picked apart as insecure. Until a grass-roots movement pushed for paper-based records to prove a voter cast a ballot for one candidate over another, the Diebold machine did not allow for independent verification of results.

      “Why am I, as a cryptographer, talking about such things?” Rivest asked, citing Archimedes maxim: “Give me one smooth spot to stand on and I will move the world.” “We have great levers to move things, if we have a smooth spot to stand on,” Rivest said. “We have secure platforms and secure keys to move the earth a bit.”

      Similarly, Kocher said he was “terrified” of the only solution he saw to enforcing consumer privacy—government regulation. While consumers have a strong incentive to maintain their privacy, law-enforcement agencies and large corporations do not, he said.

      Part of the fear engendered by government regulation is additional laws, which tend to entangle and complicate the flow of information, panelists said. For example, Kocher said, he was advised by his lawyer not to examine the leaked Microsoft code.

      “So were in an awkward situation that is almost the worst of all possible worlds,” he said. “We cant look at proprietary systems to improve our code, but the bad guys can.”

      Diffie, meanwhile, focused on a fight he said is looming over the definition and implementation of digital-rights-management. Citing the recent lawsuits by the Recording Instiitute of American Artists (RIAA), Diffie said that the notion of compensating copyright holders had evolved into a situation in which those copyright holders had begun to dictate how consumers could use it. “Soon youll only be able to buy a machine … where you wont be able to tell it what you want to do and it does it,” he said.

      The panel failed to propose a solution for one of the most pernicious and pervasive security problems: the problem of the user itself. “Phishing” scams and other techniques to wrest personal information from users wont go away easily, they agreed.

      In perhaps the only actual discussion of cryptography, the Weizmann Institutes Shamir said the sun was setting on stream ciphers used to encode real-time data streams. Instead, the power of todays microprocessors could be used to encode data in blocks via block ciphers, which are more powerful but require a large amount of information to be buffered and then encoded.

      /zimages/5/28571.gifCheck out eWEEK.coms Security Center at security.eweek.com for security news, views and analysis.

      Be sure to add our eWEEK.com Security newsfeed to your RSS newsreader:
      /zimages/5/19420.gifhttp://rssnewsapps.ziffdavis.com/eweeksecurity.xml

      Mark Hachman
      Get the Free Newsletter!
      Subscribe to Daily Tech Insider for top news, trends & analysis
      This email address is invalid.
      Get the Free Newsletter!
      Subscribe to Daily Tech Insider for top news, trends & analysis
      This email address is invalid.

      MOST POPULAR ARTICLES

      Latest News

      Zeus Kerravala on Networking: Multicloud, 5G, and...

      James Maguire - December 16, 2022 0
      I spoke with Zeus Kerravala, industry analyst at ZK Research, about the rapid changes in enterprise networking, as tech advances and digital transformation prompt...
      Read more
      Applications

      Datadog President Amit Agarwal on Trends in...

      James Maguire - November 11, 2022 0
      I spoke with Amit Agarwal, President of Datadog, about infrastructure observability, from current trends to key challenges to the future of this rapidly growing...
      Read more
      IT Management

      Intuit’s Nhung Ho on AI for the...

      James Maguire - May 13, 2022 0
      I spoke with Nhung Ho, Vice President of AI at Intuit, about adoption of AI in the small and medium-sized business market, and how...
      Read more
      Applications

      Kyndryl’s Nicolas Sekkaki on Handling AI and...

      James Maguire - November 9, 2022 0
      I spoke with Nicolas Sekkaki, Group Practice Leader for Applications, Data and AI at Kyndryl, about how companies can boost both their AI and...
      Read more
      Cloud

      IGEL CEO Jed Ayres on Edge and...

      James Maguire - June 14, 2022 0
      I spoke with Jed Ayres, CEO of IGEL, about the endpoint sector, and an open source OS for the cloud; we also spoke about...
      Read more
      Logo

      eWeek has the latest technology news and analysis, buying guides, and product reviews for IT professionals and technology buyers. The site’s focus is on innovative solutions and covering in-depth technical content. eWeek stays on the cutting edge of technology news and IT trends through interviews and expert analysis. Gain insight from top innovators and thought leaders in the fields of IT, business, enterprise software, startups, and more.

      Facebook
      Linkedin
      RSS
      Twitter
      Youtube

      Advertisers

      Advertise with TechnologyAdvice on eWeek and our other IT-focused platforms.

      Advertise with Us

      Menu

      • About eWeek
      • Subscribe to our Newsletter
      • Latest News

      Our Brands

      • Privacy Policy
      • Terms
      • About
      • Contact
      • Advertise
      • Sitemap
      • California – Do Not Sell My Information

      Property of TechnologyAdvice.
      © 2022 TechnologyAdvice. All Rights Reserved

      Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this site are from companies from which TechnologyAdvice receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site including, for example, the order in which they appear. TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies or all types of products available in the marketplace.

      ×