In-Security Warning from Crypto Experts

San Francisco, Tuesday - About 15,000 people who turned out this week in San Francisco for the annual RSA Conference and on day one many of them were listening intently to their cryptographic “heroes” Whitfield Diffie, Martin Hellman, Ronald Rivest and Adi Shamir (pictured L-R)

Diffie and Hellman developed the protocol for sharing secret keys, known as the Diffie-Hellman in 1976 and a year later Ronald Rivest and Adi Shamir (with Len Adelman) invented the RSA (Rivest-Shamir-Adleman) algorithm we use as part of our encryption security.

On a visit to release new Senetas products to the North American market, to meet with technology partners and customers, and to learn more about the new and emerging technologies, I was interested to hear that the mobile phone many think is secure, is not!

Professor Adi Shamir warned of the vulnerability of voice and data encryption over the air through GSM mobile phones which used the A5/1 64-bit protocol, but discarded 10 bits, leaving an effective key length of 54 bits – “It is so easy to crack A51…you can do it on a single computer in a matter of seconds”, he told the audience.

Prof. Shamir also expressed concern at an announcement at the Conference by US Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, that he planned to reduce the number of computer entry ports to the US Government from thousands to only 50 and to increase the number of fingerprints required to enter the US from two to all 10. About 2000 people had reportedly been identified by the current two finger program and he said he expected adding another eight fingers might only pick up a few more who overstayed visas, but would cost another $300 million, which could be better spent elsewhere on security.

Prof. Shamir argued that having only 50 government portals gave hackers more specific targets to attack, but earlier Secretary Chertoff reasoned that the government could not monitor everything entering federal networks which needed to be able to detect and analyse online anomolies “not in hours, but minutes”.

Mr Chertoff said the threats from cyberspace had “human and economic consequences on par with September 11”, and he took them as seriously as physical threats because of the potential cascading effect of a successful cyber attack across the USA and the world..

“From hackers, to organized criminal groups, to a hacker simply showing he can do it, to nation States or terrorist groups – these are the kinds of cyberthreats we are worried about,” the Secretary said.

He provided some detail on an attack on Estonia in May last year which overwhelmed computer networks that usually got 1000 visits a day, with more than 2000 hits a second. Estonia had to shut itself off from the Internet for days bringing their financial system to a halt, he said, adding “single-handedly a small group of nation State can do the sort of damage that, in years past, only came when you dropped bombs.”

John DuBois, CEO Senetas

A television report on Senetas Corporation and its world-leading high speed network encryption technology will be shown throughout the month of March on US Airways international flights.

The video segment, part of the 21st Century Business syndicated TV program hosted by General Alexander Haig, will be seen on over 1500 international flights during the month, reaching over 300,000 travelers.

US Airways is the fifth largest airline in the USA and flies to more than 150 cities across the Canada, Mexico, Latin America, the Caribbean and Europe, including Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Mexico City, Acapulco, Cancun, San Jose, Costa Rica, Aruba, Los Cabos, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Dublin, London (Gatwick) Madrid, Milan, Paris (Charles De Gaulle), Rome and more.

Senetas CEO, John DuBois said gaining the extra exposure in the US market can only benefit
Senetas, whose technology is available locally through OEM partner SafeNet.

"It will provide an introduction to Senetas directly before we attend one of the world's most important security events, the RSA Conference in San Francisco in early April," Mr DuBois said.