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The RIAA Succeeds Where the Cypherpunks Failed First published December 17, 2003 on the "Networks, Economics, and Culture" mailing list. Subscribe to the mailing list. For years, the US Government has been terrified of losing surveillance powers over digital communications generally, and one of their biggest fears has been broad public adoption of encryption. If the average user were to routinely encrypt their email, files, and instant messages, whole swaths of public communication currently available to law enforcement with a simple subpoena (at most) would become either unreadable, or readable only at huge expense. The first broad attempt by the...

Encryption Promises Unbreakable Codes BRIAN BERGSTEIN Associated Press NEW YORK - Code-makers could be on the verge of winning their ancient arms race with code-breakers. After 20 years of research, an encryption process is emerging that is considered unbreakable because it employs the mind-blowing laws of quantum physics. This month, a small startup called MagiQ Technologies Inc. began selling what appears to be the first commercially available system that uses individual photons to transfer the numeric keys that are widely used to encode and read secret documents. Photons, discrete particles of energy, are so sensitive that if anyone tries to...

<p>Microsoft Corp.'s trusted computing vision inched closer to reality on Wednesday, as an industry group released an updated specification for storing encrypted information.</p> <p>Version 1.2 of the Trusted Computing Group's hardware specification was released at the RSA Conference 2003 Europe in Amsterdam. The group is responsible for overseeing the development of Trusted Platform Modules, small microcontrollers that reside on a PC's hard drive and encrypt data, thus protecting it.</p>

"In 1995 Sanford Robertson also had a big financial interest in the U.S. computer security industry. Robertson's investment firm had hundreds of millions of dollars tied up in a Massachusetts based computer company named Security Dynamics Inc. (SDI). Thus, in 1995 Gore had direct control of policy that also affected Robertson financially. Security Dynamics was able to import computer security hardware manufactured in China. SDI secured Hong Kong electronics maker RJP Industries to produce electronic computer security cards for sale in America. The Chinese manufactured cards are sold to major defense contractors, medical institutions and the U.S. government. Hong Kong...

The new IC7-MAX3 ABIT motherboard comes with ide hard disk encryption built onto the board... this is cool The following is from the website...pretty amazing really "MAXimum Security For MAX3, the ABIT Engineers listened to users who were asking for information security. SecureIDE connects to your IDE hard disk and has a special decoder; without a special key, your hard disk cannot be opened by anyone. Thus hackers and would be information thieves cannot access your hard disk, even if they remove it from your PC. Protect your privacy and keep anyone from snooping into your information. Lock down your...

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/4/9/163800.shtml The Death of Saddam Hussein Charles R. Smith Thursday, April 10, 2003 Freedom Comes to Baghdad In the late afternoon of April 17, 1943, a top-secret message arrived at Army Air Force headquarters on Guadalcanal. Code breakers working for the U.S. Navy had deciphered a critical message sent by the Imperial Japanese Navy. Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, commander in chief of the Imperial Navy and the architect of the attack on Pearl Harbor, was scheduled to arrive in Bougainville the next morning. The admiral's arrival placed him in range of American P-38 Lighting fighters based on Guadalcanal. Unknown to Yamamoto,...

Is life too short to learn PGP? Want just enough encryption to pass unbreakable mash notes in class that look like gibberish to anyone except you and your significant other? Is that what you're after, bunky? Then click on http://www.cipher-encryption.com/text-encryption.html To encrypt a message, type in any passcode you want. Then type in your message and click on Encrypt. Then send the passcode and copy/paste the encrypted garbage you see in an email to somebody else. To decrypt the message, copy/paste the encrypted text into the Message: block (make sure there are NO extra spaces), enter the passcode, then click...

<p>Will Manindra Agrawal bring about the end of the Internet as we know it? The question is not as ridiculous as it was just two months ago.</p> <p>Prof. Agrawal is a 36-year old theoretical computer scientist at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur, India. In August, he solved a problem that had eluded millennia of mathematicians: developing a method to determine with complete certainty if a number is prime.</p>

I have been reading about ssh and using tunnelling to bypass proxy servers and go thru firewalls. I have DSL at home and I have loaded the freeware AnalogX web proxy server broadcasting on port 6588. I have also loaded up the Putty ssh client at home and at work. I have the ssh clients on both ends listening at port 5000 and redirecting to port 8080 at work and to port 6588 at home. i.e. localhost:5000 port forwarding to localhost:8080. I then directed internet explorer at work to use the proxy 127.0.0.1(or localhost):8080 for web access This configuration should...

Digital signatures can easily be forged and therefore can't be trusted in Outlook because of the same certificate chaining issue plaguing Internet Explorer, researcher Mike Benham says. Benham is responsible for discovering and publicizing the IE debacle, where SSL certs can be signed by an untrusted intermediary without warning to the end user, as we reported earlier. Now after a bit of further tinkering it appears that the same design flaw can be used against Outlook users. Briefly, an attacker would sign an untrusted cert with a trusted, intermediate one. Of course, just because the cert doing the signing is...

<p>If a Chinese official had to come up with a list of his government's enemies overseas, a 51-year-old former journalist and ex-U.N. official in Toronto proudly admits he would be ranked near the top.</p> <p>An active member of two computer hacking groups, the man, who goes by the alias Oxblood Ruffin, is leading an effort to help Chinese dissidents by providing them software that allows Internetusers to avoid Beijing's censors. Oxblood is a member of Cult of the Dead Cow, a hacker group that started in the mid-1980s. He is also active in a newer, related group, Hacktivismo, which last month released Camera/Shy, a free program that helps encrypt content on the Internet.</p>

Why doesn't the Pentagon, and particularly General Franks, encrypt the "war plans" and other secret information? It could then be stored, not on a computer's hard drive, but on something like a Zip Drive and locked up in a safe place.Is this too difficult for the Feds to figure out?

Hunt for hidden web messages goes on 18:13 12 July 02 NewScientist.com news service Computer enthusiasts have been searching for messages hidden in web site images following new claims that the al-Qaeda terrorist network is using this technique - steganography - to communicate. However, one expert in the field warns the images that have been flagged up as suspicious after initial examination are almost certain to be cleared after full analysis. Peter Honeyman, at the University of Michigan, told New Scientist: "You get a lot of these. We call them false positives." On 10 July, USA Today reported that US...

April 24, 2002 By Liza Porteus , National Journal's Technology Daily White House Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge on Tuesday said the high-tech sector is making instrumental contributions to the Bush administration as it cultivates a national homeland security strategy. Homeland security efforts will depend on technologies such as biometrics, next-generation detection devices designed to find traces of chemical or biological agents, dashboard electronics to ensure efficient border crossing for trucks and other vehicles, simulation software, and advanced encryption-standard codes, Ridge said during a dinner speech at the Electronic Industries Alliance's annual conference. Such advances are "more proof that the...

When I first heard about the encryption technique developed by Dr. Richard Hughes, it sounded like science fiction. After he explained it to me in detail, it still sounded like science fiction. Imagine, if you will, a means of delivering encryption keys that is so secure that it's impossible to break because doing so would violate the laws of physics. In other words, the delivery method is so secure, it's protected by the very fabric of the universe. IF THAT DOESN'T get your attention, think about this: What Dr. Hughes is working with is a way to encode information on...

How to Think About SecurityIf security has a silly season, we're in it. After September 11, every two-bit peddler of security technology crawled out of the woodwork with new claims about how his product can make us all safe again. Every misguided and defeated government security initiative was dragged out of the closet, dusted off, and presented as the savior of our way of life. More and more, the general public is being asked to make security decisions, weigh security tradeoffs, and accept more intrusive security. Unfortunately, the general public has no idea how to do this. But we in...

Nanny-Cam May Leave a Home ExposedSat Apr 13, 2:55 PM ETBy JOHN SCHWARTZ The New York TimesThousands of people who have installed a popular wireless video camera, intending to increase the security of their homes and offices, have instead unknowingly opened a window on their activities to anyone equipped with a cheap receiver. • Venezuela's Chief Forced to Resign; Civilian Installed • Nanny-Cam May Leave a Home Exposed • For the latest breaking news, visit NYTimes.com • Get DealBook, a daily email digest of corporate finance newsDealBook. Search NYTimes.com: The wireless video camera, which is heavily advertised on the Internet,...

<p>WASHINGTON -- America's programmers, engineers and sundry bit-heads have not yet figured out how much a new copyright bill will affect their livelihood.</p> <p>When they do, watch for an angry Million Geek March to storm Capitol Hill.</p> <p>A bill introduced this week by Sen. Fritz Hollings (D-South Carolina) would roil the electronics industry by forcibly embedding copy protection into all digital devices, from MP3 players to cell phones, fax machines, digital cameras and personal computers.</p>