IBM Hardwires Encryption Into Chips

zenwarrior writes "Reported by CNET, a new chip technology termed Secure Blue by IBM will keep users' data encrypted and secured at virtually every moment on essentially anything in which the chip can be used. Data is even encrypted in RAM, leaving display for users' viewing as almost the last place it isn't encrypted. This has to be considered decidedly anti-Homeland Defense by the current administration. If so, when will we see it if ever?"

Comments

Don't know about cnet

[bigberk]

But I looked through the IBM Press Room and didn't see anything about this technology. Why post a story about "IBM planning to release on Monday..." when you can just wait for a real release from the company to happen. At the moment I'd like to share this info with colleagues who do research in hardware security but can't find a good source to send them to.

Re:Pretty cool

[TheRaven64]

This sounds pretty paranoid, and easy to circumvent. No one is trying to ban OpenBSD in the US, for example, and it includes strong encryption (developed outside the USA), and is used on a number of router and firewalls.

Re:Pretty cool

[Feyr]

it used to be the case that anything related to encryption (application, patent, you name it), had to be vetted by the NSA. even the venerable DES (which was developped by IBM) had NSA input in it

not so much anymore. there might be some cases, but it's not a blanket policy anymore. the PGP case pretty much killed that

Re:Ok, what are we talking about?

[Trelane]

Makes me wonder how much 'assistance' IBM got from the NSA.

What, you mean like back when they were developing DES, and they got visited by the NSA? It went something like this (totally made-up, aside from the fact that the basic scenario happened):

IBM: So, this is our new crypto algorithm! Isn't it neat?
NSA: Yeah, neat. Umm, you should add a little something here. [points to a segment of the chart, indicating that they should include the "S-Box"]
IBM: But why?
NSA: Because. M'kay?
IBM: I guess. OK. [draws in the S-Box]

Then in the late 1980's, differential cryptographic analysis is discovered and, gosh, adding that bit as the NSA said helped prevent differential cryptanalysis from succeeding against it.

Lesson: The NSA isn't entirely evil. They employ some of the brightest mathematicians in the USA, and they use 'em to help the USA's citizens and businesses. This also trickles out into the rest of the world, to a (admittedly limited) extent. Notably, the "USA's citizens' and business'" interest is not always in the interest of other citizens and businesses (nor necessarily all), and politics are involved, so I'm not pretending they're saints either, particularly if you're from another country. But the point is that they provably do good--especially considering that the SE Linux project is sponsored by the NSA. (It's interesting to note that the wikipedia article on the S-box also mentions how people paranoid about NSA backdoors tore apart the S-Box too).

source: A LISA talk/tutorial on cryptography. The wikipedia links have information too.

Re:Clipper Chip???

[Helios1182]

When public key crypto came out the government had a fit. Actually, the whole history of cryptography and the NSA is interesting. They fought it tooth and nail, but eventually had to come to terms with the public having strong crypto. Check out "Crypto, How the code rebels beat the government - saving privavy in teh digital age," by Steven Levy for some history in an interesting storylike format.

Not New

[Non Dufus]

Dallas (now part of Maxim) has been doing this kind of stuff for years with their DS5002/5240/5250 series CPUs (http://www.maxim-ic.com/products/microcontrollers /secure/). Of course these are 8-bit devices that are used primarily for Pin-pad type devices at the Point-of-sale.