When you send people passwords and private links via email or chat, there are copies of that information stored in many places. If you use a one-time link instead, the information persists for a single viewing which means it can't be read by someone else later. This allows you to send sensitive information in a safe way knowing it's seen by one person only. Think of it like a self-destructing message, a
One Time Secret.
posted by netbros
on Dec 16, 2011 -
35 comments
The
Haystack application aims to use
steganography to hide
samizdat-type data within a larger stream of innocuous network traffic. Thus, civilians in Iran, for example, could more easily evade Iranian censors and provide the world with an
unfiltered report on events within the country. Haystack earned its creator
Austin Heap a great deal of positive coverage from the media during the 2009 Iranian election protests. The BBC described Heap as
"on the front lines" of the protesters' "Twitter revolution", while The Guardian called him an
Innovator of the Year. Despite the laudatory coverage, however, the media were never given a copy of the software to examine. Indeed, not much is known about the software or its inner workings. Specialists in network encryption security were not allowed to perform an independent evaluation of Haystack, despite its distribution to and use by a small number of Iranians, possibly at some risk. As interest in the project
widens and criticisms of the media coverage and software continue to
mount, Heap has currently asked users to
cease using Haystack until a security review can be performed.
posted by Blazecock Pileon
on Sep 13, 2010 -
31 comments
Clear passenger data stolen. A unencrypted laptop with the personal data, including name, address, SSi number, passport number, date of birth, etc. of every one of the 33,000+ users of the the
Clear system has been stolen. The Clear system allows travelers who register and pay an annual fee to bypass airport security lines by using a smart card in some airports. TSA has suspended new registrations until
Verified Identity Pass, Inc., a subsidiary of GE, figures out how to install PGP. VIP is the only private contractor allowed to register users to the Clear system.
Via
posted by dejah420
on Aug 5, 2008 -
103 comments
New "Hi - tech" passport cracked. Standards for the new passports were set by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (
ICAO) in 2003 and adopted by the waiver countries and the US. The UK Home Office has adopted a very high encryption technology called
3DES - that is, to a military-level data-encryption standard times three. However they used non-secret information actually published in the passport to create a 'secret key'. That is the equivalent of installing a solid steel front door to your house and then putting the key under the mat.
posted by adamvasco
on Nov 17, 2006 -
53 comments
Quantum Encryption Scientists have created an unbreakable cypher through the use of quantum physics, where a photon is observed and used as the basis for an encryption key. "Uncertainty is the principle we exploit. It's impossible to find the key, because the photon can be measured once and only once. An eavesdropper can't measure it, and so can't get the key." Props to Heisenberg!
posted by PreacherTom
on Nov 9, 2006 -
49 comments
The synchronization of two pendulum clocks was discovered in 1665 by Huygens. Two pendulum clocks mounted on the same wall always fell exactly out of phase with each other no matter what the starting conditions. Regardless of the initial conditions the system always ended up the same. In stark contrast, a
chaotic system is
extremely sensitive to initial conditions. How can these two seemingly seperate things be tied together?
The synchronization of chaos. When two chaotic systems are synchronized together,
information can be shared between them. It immediatly brings to mind applications for
encryption, but it is still far away from everyday
use.
posted by ozomatli
on Dec 14, 2005 -
49 comments
Homer Simpson: Hack your DVD player. It seems in countries in which the DVD Copy Control Authority doesn't own the government, even the giants of corpmedia don't like the "protection" features the platform foists on consumers. On Fox's Simpsons UK DVD release FAQ page, Homer himself says "I have no idea whatsoever what regional coding means. But it is essential that you buy a multi-regional player. Do it now." Is the DVD region-coding system really only relevant in the United States?
posted by Vetinari
on Jul 11, 2002 -
25 comments
War on Civil Liberties Watch: Usable encryption is in deep doo-doo.
A new poll finds 72% of Americans now supporting a ban on unbreakable encryption. (Apparantly breakable, and thus useless, encryption is just fine.) Besides the obvious fact that this stuff is already out there and cannot be taken back, particularly from non-US citizens who don't give a damn about our laws (such as, say, the exact people we're trying to defeat), is there any hope that the courts will find any such new laws unconstitutional?
posted by aaron
on Sep 18, 2001 -
36 comments
Tivo hackers today released the hack that enables you to get MPEG-2 video out of the box and put it on CDs, share it over the net, etc. No details because the
AVS Tivo site (registration required) is being
slashdotted...but will this precipitate a TiVo crackdown on the hackers?
posted by luser
on Jun 7, 2001 -
21 comments
ALL YOUR EMAIL ARE BELONG TO US! How serious is this threat? What precautions do you routinely take? What precautions do you think you *should* be taking? What viable options do we have today, for those of us who aren't computer programmers by profession? And how secure are they, anyway?
posted by rushmc
on May 30, 2001 -
12 comments
Wincent Colaiuta has seen and reviewed the new Mac OS but you can't read the review. He's encrypted the whole thing using PGP and he's not releasing the key until the OS is released. He says he's done this to avoid law suits from Apple.
I say he's begging for hits.
If he wanted to avoid lawsuits, he could just wait to publish the review...
posted by Jako
on Mar 20, 2001 -
6 comments
The battle for unrestricted encryption continues. Professor Bernstein won't rest; he's not going to let this go. More power to him and let's hope he ultimately wins. [He's challenging the US government restrictions on private encryption on free-speech grounds, and so far he's won in every court where the case has been heard. The government has been using delaying actions, and their relaxation of restrictions may partially have been in hopes he'd give up, leaving them still capable of some control. He's not going to, though. He's got blood in his eye, so to speak.]
posted by Steven Den Beste
on Jan 8, 2001 -
0 comments
In this sendmail.net piece, Greg Knauss (of Winerlog-when-it-was-good fame) asserts, among other things, that if a court subpoenas your email, and it's encrypted, that you can be tossed in jail for contempt if you don't give them the keys. Um, hello? 5th amendment? Does anyone have references either way on this one?
posted by baylink
on May 8, 2000 -
6 comments
Streambox says that it has broken the encryption used on the RealNetworks streaming media format and they have released
a tool that converts RealAudio to MP3. This would probably be more useful if the actual quality of RealAudio files made it worth ripping them to my Rio.
posted by grant
on Nov 14, 1999 -
0 comments
