Oct 10th, 2008 · John Lam was one of many readers to send in news that on Thursday, "at a conference in Vienna, Austria, as reported by the BBC, a European Community science working group built a quantum backbone using 200-km of standard commercial optical fiber running …
Aug 22nd, 2008 · An anonymous reader sends word of a paper presented a few days back by Adi Shamir, the S in RSA, that promises a new form of mathematical attack against a broad range of cryptographic ciphers. The computerworld.com.au report leans heavily on Schneier's …
May 13th, 2008 · schliz writes in with research out of Sweden in which researchers showed that, looking at a quantum cryptographic system as a whole, it was possible for an eavesdropper to extract some information about the QC key, thus reducing the security of the overall …
May 13th, 2008 · Debian package maintainers tend to very often modify the source code of the package they are maintaining so that it better fits into the distribution itself. However, most of the time, their changes are not sent back to upstream for validation, which …
Feb 23rd, 2008 · Tools for removing DRM from iTunes-purchased songs (myFairTunes7, QtFairUse6) have been available from the Hymn Project Web site for some time. These are legal in many countries. But on the 20th Apple sent a Cease and Desist note to Hymn's ISP, forcing …
Feb 21st, 2008 · Contrary to popular assumption, DRAMs used in most modern computers retain their contents for seconds to minutes after power is lost, even at operating temperatures and even if removed from a motherboard. Although DRAMs become less reliable when they …
Feb 19th, 2008 · Scott Aaronson has posted a draft of his article from this month's Scientific American on the limitations of quantum computers (PDF) discussing the question: Will quantum computers let us transcend the human condition and become as powerful as gods, or …
Nov 18th, 2007 · First we learn from Bruce Schneier that the NSA may have left itself a secret back door in an officially sanctioned cryptographic random-number generator. Now Adi Shamir is warning that a math error unknown to a chip makers but discovered by a tech-savvy …
Nov 15th, 2007 · Bruce Schneier has a story on Wired about the new official standard for random-number generators the NIST released this year that will likely be followed by software and hardware developers around the world. There are four different approved techniques …
Nov 9th, 2007 · The National Institute of Standards and Technology has opened a public competition for the development of a new cryptographic hash algorithm, which will be called Secure Hash Algorithm-3 (SHA-3), and will augment the current algorithms specified in the …
Oct 8th, 2007 · Windows XP SP3 build 3205 is the first official & authorized release of the next Windows XP service pack; and has been made available to testers as a part of the Windows Server 2008/Windows Vista SP1 beta program. NeoSmart Technologies has the run-down …
Aug 23rd, 2007 · An anonymous reader alerts us to research out of Belgium and Israel that claims a practical attack on the KeeLoq auto anti-theft cipher. Here are slides from a talk (PDF) at CRYPTO 2007. From the researchers' site: "KeeLoq is a cipher used in several …
May 24th, 2007 · While research from PEW Internet (PDF) shows that few users really are bothered by spam, IETF is supporting a public key cryptographic based e-mail authentication mechanism called DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) Signatures . The new spec is supposed …
Apr 9th, 2007 · Earlier today we discussed the possibility that Debian Etch might be released soon. Well, according to debian.org, it has already happened. Etch has been released: 'The Debian Project is pleased to announce the official release of Debian GNU/Linux version …
Feb 12th, 2007 · Bruce Schneier has a commentary in Wired titled An American Idol for Crypto Geeks on the US government's competition for a new cryptographic hash function to become the national standard, covered here recently. He talks about how much the competition, …
Dec 5th, 2006 · VeriSign and NetMesh are making the case for OpenID, the grass-roots, decentralized digital identity system already supported by LiveJournal, Six Apart, Technorati, VeriSign and many startups, reportedly growing 5% every single week. They say OpenID 'is …
Dec 2nd, 2006 · Researchers at the University of Washington have published a report detailing many easy and cheap ways the Nike+ iPod Sport Kit previously discussed on Slashdot can be used to track individuals, even when they are not carrying their iPod. They have even …
Nov 18th, 2006 · romiz writes, "Branch Prediction Analysis is a recent attack vector against RSA public-key cryptography on personal computers that relies on timing measurements to get information on the bits in the private key. However, the method is not very practical …
Nov 5th, 2006 · An anonymous reader writes, "Cryptographer David Chaum and his research team have invented a new voting protocol which allows voters to verify that their vote has been correctly cast and counted. This is enabled using a surprisingly low-tech technique …
Oct 28th, 2006 · Public key crypto turned 30 last night, and the biggest names in crypto turned out to celebrate at an event hosted at the Computer History Museum. Voltage Security teamed with RSA to bring together some of the most famous cryptographers of yesterday (Whitfield …
