Macrocosmic Technologies

You know, I REALLY don’t like just regurgitating whatever Bruce Schneier is writing about, but sometimes, he’s got some GREAT stuff on his blog. He points us toward a product called KRYPTO 2.0.

From the site: Krypto uses repeated 256 bits (full bits) a coding purely been based on information of the keys file, which are the technically highest coding depth at all on computers possible are.

Now, I understand that the author is German, and that it’s fairly evident English is NOT one of his primary languages, but it’s still no excuse.

This is also reminiscent of a presentation I was witness to recently. The author of a product for biometric encryption claimed that his product’s encryption was superior because it used Super S Blocks, rather than that dusty old crap everyone else uses. Now, mind you, this product was also explained as using the biometric identifier (such as a fingerprint) as the
key, rather than having the identifier open a certificate which serves as the key. Sucks when you have to revoke the credential, huh? Well, at least you still have nine other fingers that are perfectly functional!

Bruce Schneier has recently written an interesting piece in his blog about Caller ID. In it, he writes about an AP article that details the failings of Caller ID. He asks a VERY good question. Namely,

Q: What’s worse than a bad authentication system?
A: A bad authentication system that people have learned to trust.

This is why it is imperative that when building a system used for authentication, it must be secure. The more widely utilized the system is to be, it becomes that much more important.

The article goes through real-life examples of forged caller ID information, including a congressman who was targeted by having his phone appear as the caller ID, a SWAT team operation in response to a call from a spoofed phone number, breaking into voicemail boxes that automatically authenticate based on the caller ID, and even how caller ID spoofing played a role in the 2004 “hack” of Paris Hilton’s cell phone.

More interestingly, the article touches on how the last scenario, an example of “pretexting”, is a textbook example of social engineering. With the caller appearing to be the legitimate user, the target is lulled into a lowered sense of security. It’s been used to obtain all sorts of information, but most recently, has come under fire as shady operators make pretext calls to wireless carriers to obtain copies of cell phone bills, including calls placed and received.

I’ve been playing with two pieces of hardware recently. One is the Linksys NSLU2. This device runs the Intel XScale processor with BusyBox linux. Off the shelf, it’s a way of turning your USB disks into NAS. With custom firmware, you can run pretty much whatever your want on it. Imagine one box running your file shares, caching proxy, and web server, all for under $100.