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Should Encryption Be The Norm?
Encryption should be a matter of priority and used by default. That’s the message from the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), the worldwide body in charge of the internet’s technology infrastructure.
The IAB warned in a statement that “the capabilities and activities of attackers are greater and more pervasive than previously known”.
It goes on to say: “The IAB urges protocol designers to design for confidential operation by default. We strongly encourage developers to include encryption in their implementations, and to make them encrypted by default.
“We similarly encourage network and service operators to deploy encryption where it is not yet deployed, and we urge firewall policy administrators to permit encrypted traffic.”
The purpose, the IAB claims, is to instill public trust in the internet after the myriad high-profile cases in which computer traffic has been intercepted, ranging from bank details to email addresses and all points in between.
The news will be unwelcome to the security services, which have repeatedly objected to initiatives such as the default encryption in iOS8 and Android L, claiming that it is in the interest of the population to retain the right to intercept data for the prevention of terrorism.
However, leaked information, mostly from files appropriated by rogue NSA contractor Edward Snowden, suggests that the right of information interception is abused by security services including the UK’s GCHQ.
These allegations include the collection of irrelevant data, the investigation of cold cases not in the public interest, and the passing of pictures of nude ladies to colleagues.
Can Hackers Attack A Trains Network?
January 7, 2012 by admin
Filed under Around The Net
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Security expert Professor Stefan Katzenbeisser of Technische Universität Darmstadt told a security conference in Berlin that the GSM-R which is being installed in train networks makes them vulnerable to hackers.
Katzenbeisser said that the new system was vulnerable to “Denial of Service” attacks and, while trains could not crash, service could be disrupted for quite some time. Speaking to the Chaos Communication Congress he said that Network Rail is currently installing GSM-R across the British railway network.
It uses the similar technical standards to 2G mobile networks and is due to replace older signalling technology in southern England next year, and throughout the whole country in 2014. But train switching systems, which enable trains to be guided from one track to another at a railway junction, have historically been separate from the online world. If they were connected to the internet as they are in GSM-R they could be hit by Denial of Service attacks.