So you mean they asked their vendors to change a communication protocol
More like they told vendors they need to change a communication protocol.
It's not as if the exchange has to ask the vendors' permission.
and never tested before day 1 ?
If you think "15 month test period" counts as "never tested before day 1", then sure.
Seems like the vendors had plenty of time to get their act together.
So does the government have to pay you if they decide to take your driving licence away?
as you said, it's not a contract, it's a grant.
Yes, because the driver's license is property, or why did you say "YOUR" driving license?
Presumably, "just compensation" would be equivalent to the fee paid to obtain that license,
probably about $20.
Actually, they don't have to fairly compensate the owner,
That view is not consistent with the constitution, the supreme law of the land.
The US Constitution, 5th amendment:
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Clearly, when a patent is being used to kill an industry, the value of the industry is thus zero
No. You are making a fallacy by declaring the patent holder's value of an industry as related to the industry's actual value to the public, to the marketplace, and to the greater good of society, which it is not.
Just because you can protect a monopoly by preventing competitors from getting started, does not mean the competition you prevented is worthless. In this case, the monopoly being Gasoline/Petrol as an effective reliable fuel for motor vehicles.
The immediate monetary value to the patent holder of preventing the industry from being created exceeds the monetary value to the patent holder of allowing the industry to be created and generating license fees to the patent holder for one patent for 20 years.
If the alternative industry is not created, the patent holder can expect more than 20 years of massive profits. Dwindling supply is no problem for petro companies -- price of fuel increase equals greater profits, and fewer units that need to be sold (therefore, fewer expenses per dollar of revenue).
Particularly, due to the infusion of cash that occurs, if the industry is successful, it is likely to lead to further research efforts and alternatives, further development leading to the obsolencence of that patent even before the 20 years.
The holder of that one patent then is at no advantage compared to the other patent holders.
As oil companies, they have a competitive edge, due to their entrenched position, and already built out infrastructure, contractual agreements, etc.
How about we declare "eminent domain" over their IP, since it's a "critical" need for national security?
The federal government CAN do that; they actually have the legal authority to do so under the constitution.
Actually -- patents are government issued, and they are not a contract between the government and the patent holder;
they are grants by the government, so one piece of legislation could declare specific patents invalid.
However, there is a requirement in the constitution that the owner must be fairly compensated for private property taken for public use.
If you read this as the government seizing the patent, then that means the gov't has to pay the company the fair market value for their
patent, which could be a tough question to answer....
OK then, let's revisit this conversation 5-10 years from now and see exactly how far Butamax has gone in delivering biobutanol to the public for consumption. Bet you it won't be any further than me driving an electric car with large scale NiMH batteries.
No... because the patent trolls arrested development now.
In 5 or 10 years, they will have the patents to a next critical step.... required to actually produce/use that Butamax.
Alternative energy is dependant on more than just one specific technology.
There are lots of technologies required to actually produce biofuels or to utilize them for the production of energy.
And if you are artificially prevented by a patent from getting past any one critical step, the alternative technology won't be practical.
There are and will be lots of places they can stop you from making/using Butamax.
Due to the patents, there will be very few R&D attempts by others.
Translation: less competition, less innovation, lower chance the technology develops, and with fewer people working on it -- it will be easy for the Oil companies to make sure they do any "development" / "invention" needed to get more patents FIRST.
Their patent lasts 20 years from the date of issue (usually 5 or so years after the date of application), so for all intents and purposes, they have a lock on that one patented thing for 30 - 35 years.
Oh right... each patent is just one small invention required to produce and use the biofuel.
Plenty of time to figure out the 'next things' companies developing the technology need,
and get patents for those before the patent they have expires.
If they just make sure to get a new patent locking down a "next step" once every 10 years,
then nobody will ever come up with the technology.
That is, unless their competitor somehow works somehow in complete secret at a very fast pace, even
somehow managing to avoid Oil company spies/corporate espionage, and then still comes
out with completed technology and patents that.
Still, it takes 5+ years or so for such R and D anyways
They own the patents in the first place for the purpose of trolling.
It's not a question of them donating them or not, they spent money buying up and getting patents to obstruct alternative energy in as many ways as possible, to protect their business of selling fossil fuels, which are more profitable for them to sell than to sell alternatives, let alone spending all that money actually developing any of the technologies they got the patents to.
silver is going up in price. Your new tablet will be worth it's weight in base metal in a year or two.
Indeed... I would take a bar of.999 silver of equal weight to an iPad any day.
In 3 or 4 years, it will probably still be worth less than an iPad sells for at that time.
But that will be because the 16gb iPads will be selling for $2000 or so.
There's a reason "sale of stolen goods" is illegal. The "i'm just a third party" excuse doesn't work.
If that were true, all the pawn store owners in town would be in jail, and eBay would be among the web sites shut down by the feds for facilitating trafficking in stolen goods.
You're talking about people aiding and abetting a criminal act, which is an entirely different story.
If you are a content delivery network, and you allow people to engage your services to distribute their content you are not distributing their content
Your agreement with them can also include a requirement that they actually have the right to distribute the content.
If they cannot, you as service provider are protected by the DMCA safe harbor, unless your company has employees knowing that certain content a customer is distributing is illegal for them to redistribute.
It's not in the interest of the public good for our public services to nanny your kids 24/7.
But it's in the interests of the public nanny state.
Produce kids who are not self-sufficient, and you can guarantee they will depend
on the nanny state and entitlement programs for the rest of their lives;
which further cements the political position of the powers that be.
To make sure they are at home, awake, and studying at that time; instead of at a friends house drinking, OR sleeping when the school has dictated they should be finishing their homework?
Am I missing something here? What's so special about a device that takes EM radiation and transforms it into heat? A black block of steel does the same thing.
They're calling it a coherent perfect absorber... presumably, because it somehow accomplishes the feet of absorbing all (or nearly all) the light.
A black block of steel reflects some light. Some loss due to reflection instead of absorption.
Which has some implications, at least, inside optical computer microchips, where reflected light could cause interference.
Unless I'm missing something, this is horribly vulnerable if an attacker can "borrow" your disk at multiple snaps in time
Not that an attacker "borrowing" the disk multiple times is considered a threat; if you are using only this scheme.
If you want to defend against that, layer whole disk encryption with XEX-AES on top of this scheme.
And use a removable hardware device for the 'key disk' that gets locked up in a vault separate from the vault the hard disk is locked up, except when the uber-sensitive PC is in use.
The importance of physical security should not be underestimated in preventing hard disk 'borrowing'
One could also think about using fiberoptic cable instead of copper for energy transmission, but I don't see a real application for that (except maybe some exotic noise issues).
I suppose the question is... what the losses would be due to conversions; and losses over the cable distance would be, compared to transmitting electrical current over the same distances?
If it turned out to be more efficient, then one could imagine high powered transmission lines being replaced with lasers and anti-lasers and cable buried at each end:-)
It would be more expensive, but that would solve the problem of weather anomalies destroying transmission lines.
Which currently cannot be buried due to inefficiency / losses through soil.
It would also eliminate electrocution risk. If someone accidentally cut into a transmission line, the situation could be signalled by the anti-laser end, causing its paired transmitter to reduce power near zero and identify the location of the break.
I think when you say "once", you mean, perhaps "1 trillion times" if you're filling up a 1 TB hard drive.
I mean that you generate all values required for every bit position on the disk exactly once.
And specifically ignoring any risk that is created, because in some cases, someone can reliably recover old versions of a bit position that was XOR'ed with the same key bit position, if a disk sector is ever overwritten with new data (when new random bits on the key disk are not generated for the data being overwritten).
How will you certify this home-built apparatus to ensure that the numbers it generators are truly random and there are no biases in your nanosecond timer due to EMF interference or temperature fluctuations that could be exploited to attack the randomness of the data?
I won't. Who said anything about making this at home?
Right, but the hard part is getting the truely random data - and refreshing it periodically so you can do "encryption key changes" which you will likely also have to do to survive a security audit.
No. I am suggesting you implement your whole drive encryption scheme on top of this.
This total scheme is still not secure against someone stealing the computer system; since both the key
drive and the data drive are stored in it.
I do not suggest this eliminates the need or utility of also encrypting the volume on top of it.
But it is certainly a formidable barrier to any attack effort.
Proper place for the drive keying scheme would be a "failsafe" for organizations who are not satisfied that AES256 encryption is secure to just re-sell the drive after formatting.
With the keying scheme and encryption; there is then simply no justification for the ecological impact of destroying hard drives instead of proper recycling.
On my Core i7,/dev/urandom generates pseudo-random numbers at maybe 500 GB/day. A true RNG will be much, much slower.
Your i7's ability to compute random numbers has nothing to do with the rate that true random numbers can be collected using suitable hardware. Your 500gb per day corresponds to approximately 5.92 megabytes per second, which is really quite poor, in terms of performance. This is what happens when you try to execute
elaborate computational algorithms; that by no mean indicates random numbers cannot be generated quickly.
The largest Enterprise SSDs that exist right now are ~100gb
That means, you need approximately 858993459200 random bits.
To do that in one hour, you need 238609294bps aka 28.4 megabytes per second.
Anyways, at your slow rate of RNG it would only take 4.8 hours.
Not like it will be a problem for the manufacturer of the "key DISKs".
Parallelism can be used to produce output at a high rate, and there are high-speed random number generation methods suitable for OTP use.
You had better choose your random number generator wisely, or your data may not be as secure as you think.
You don't have to use a "random number generator". You can capture truly random values, since you only have to do it once.
For example, you can hook up a USB geiger counter, place it near a decaying radioactive sample, and collect values measuring the nanosecond timings between photons triggering the counter.
Why not just use a proven encryption method to encrypt everything, then even if someone acquires all of your drives,
There is no such thing as proven encryption. Any encryption algorithm is subject to possibly being broken. And having vulnerabilities. It is possible someone has already broken AES and can decrypt any ciphertext, but they have just not revealed that fact to the public yet.
Entropy methods of masking data involving truly random values cannot be "cracked" by brute forced by finding a hole in a cipher, because there is no cipher.
the data is still secure. (assuming proper key management, of course).
The data is more secure than if it had been plaintext.
The data is less secure than if the drive had been destroyed
With a 'key drive' or 'one time pad' that is not disposed with the drive,
the data is just as secure as if the drive had been destroyed, assuming a valid implementation of the OTP method.
That said, it would be nice if there was some standard way of doing this.
Wouldn't it be even cooler if they made it part of the ATA standard itself,
so you could send a single disk command to immediately commit to secure destruction of the entire volume.... such that even if someone powered down
in the middle of an erase and powered the drive back up, the circuit boards inside the drive would just continue the committed physical media secure erase rather than respond to any further read commands, or enable any type of inquiries/recovery efforts?
Instead of using a SSD use an array of SSDs; with array pairs randomly chosen from a massive pile.
When writing a block, XOR it by a random number of equal size.
Write the random bits to one SSD, write the XOR'ed result to the other SSD.
Then the data cannot be derived from either SSD alone, and neither alone gives you any better chance of getting the data than if you just had a bunch of random bits.
I call this RAID -1 (RAID negative 1), or the opposite of redundant mirroring.
That is... without both disks, you have nothing.
Now then... you can call one disk the 'data disk' and the other disk the 'key disk'.
The key disk can be written to one time, during initial provisioning of the array, and never needs
to be written to again.
Therefore instead of being an actual "SSD" the "Key SSD" can be some type of inexpensive
read-optimized write-once memory.
It could even be a little chip that gets plugged into the "data SSD" and acts like a read-only secondary hard disk.
When you need to replace your primary SSD because it has run out of write cycles, that's no problem...
just DD it to a shiny new SSD, and insert. Put the same "key SSD" in place.
All you need to do is ensure the "key SSD" is at least as large in size and has at least as many random bits as the data SSD has capacity.
The old data SSD is worthless and completely unreadable without the "key disk",
and there's no reason to destroy it, as long as the "key SSD" remains secure
As for the "key SSD"... there is no reason to ever get rid of it, since it can be re-used without issue, it will never
run out of write cycles, because it's never written to under normal operation.
Since it can basically be a big hardwired ROM chip, using inexpensive burned fuse links, write-once PROM,
it probably costs $10 or less.
If you do choose to get rid of the key SSD... you can make the chance of someone ever putting together the data ssd and the matching key SSD
less than lottery odds.
If it's a cheap key device, just melt down the key device and send it for recycling, with minimal ecological damage compared to
scrapping large volumes of SSDs.
In the OP situation, the only time to suggest changing the password is on the way out the door. After the door has closed, I agree it's too late.
I think there might be a little more leeway than that:)
There is one other way it's valid... in writing very soon after you are out the door.
Because putting it in writing is sensible and the explanation is obvious: by putting it in writing, you can make sure you documentation for future purposes.
And you cannot be expected to type the formal letter you need in order to put it in writing, while security is escorting you out the door with your stuff, after having taken all your keys, company cell phone, laptop, etc.
However, if you wait 6 - 12 months to do it; that will rightly raise suspicions.
If you felt you had some kind of duty or obligation to inform/remind them, then why did you wait so long?
But why doesnt the author simply re-license it as something other than GPLv3 for the App Stores version?
Because he doesn't want to? Because it's still possible for a distributor and a recipient of the APP to further redistribute and still comply with the GPL, as long as GPL-compliant access to the source code is provided through some method?
Microsoft is basically a third party here. They are neither a licensee nor a licensor of the software.
They are a vendor who performs some important tasks required by the APP creator to redistribute their software.
When you redistribute a program under the GPLv3, you grant the receiver a license to any patents that you own and that are used by that program.
Only if your only right to redistribute is the one provided by the GPLv3
If you are acting as an agent of the copyright owner, or you have been given your own redistribution license from the copyright owner,
you do not necessarily have to follow the GPL in regards to your redistribution of the work.
For example, if the owner of the work hires another company called Content Delivery Network Co. to run the FTP/HTTP servers to distribute the owner's work,
which the author will provide to them, and they'll provide web sites and mirror servers to make available.
Content Delivery Network Co distributes the work; however, they are not bound by the GPL in regards to redistribution.
They are bound solely by their agreement with the copyright owner.
Sure I do. I didn't do it, so they can't prove I did. And I get to rub it in their faces- "You fired me, a competent employee, and hired some losers who can't even change a password. What idiots!!".
The best thing to do in such circumstances is probably to just let yourself forget what your old password is.
Providing you were smart, it is a strong password, and difficult to remember, it will be forgotten eventually.
Just don't try to remember it or use any new password similar to it.
but is it my responsibility to suggest they change the password? especially since a 'professional' it outsourcing company took it over?
The problem is 'suggesting they changed the password' is proof that although you no longer work for them, you tried using your credentials to regain access to their system.
If they are dicks, they might call up the police and press charges for unauthorized access to their computer system,
even if you think you're just trying to be helpful, testing to make sure your creds are no longer valid.
Practically there is nothing like a Kill Switch! Only certain ISP's could be asked to make changes in their routers. The term Kill Switch is just a Metaphor
That's probably not what they'd do. They'd ask ISPs and telco providers ahead of time to identify major circuits providing internet connectivity.
And the kill switch would be either sending all the telco providers orders to cut those particular fibers.
OR: CALEA-style requirement for telco characters to incorporate "Lawful Disconnect" technology along with their normal "Lawful Intercept" technology, to allow law enforcement to encumber against telcos for all the circuits as they deem
essential to shutdown to break internet connectivity for users and critical infrastructure.
It may even be possible law enforcement could add "Remote disconnect" as a required option for Lawful Intercept
technology in the future, regardless of legislative action -- if congress doesn't pass the law, and the executive
branch decide they really want a kill switch.
Slashdot Mirror
So you mean they asked their vendors to change a communication protocol
More like they told vendors they need to change a communication protocol. It's not as if the exchange has to ask the vendors' permission.
and never tested before day 1 ?
If you think "15 month test period" counts as "never tested before day 1", then sure. Seems like the vendors had plenty of time to get their act together.
So does the government have to pay you if they decide to take your driving licence away? as you said, it's not a contract, it's a grant.
Yes, because the driver's license is property, or why did you say "YOUR" driving license? Presumably, "just compensation" would be equivalent to the fee paid to obtain that license, probably about $20.
Actually, they don't have to fairly compensate the owner,
That view is not consistent with the constitution, the supreme law of the land.
The US Constitution, 5th amendment:
Clearly, when a patent is being used to kill an industry, the value of the industry is thus zero
No. You are making a fallacy by declaring the patent holder's value of an industry as related to the industry's actual value to the public, to the marketplace, and to the greater good of society, which it is not.
Just because you can protect a monopoly by preventing competitors from getting started, does not mean the competition you prevented is worthless. In this case, the monopoly being Gasoline/Petrol as an effective reliable fuel for motor vehicles.
The immediate monetary value to the patent holder of preventing the industry from being created exceeds the monetary value to the patent holder of allowing the industry to be created and generating license fees to the patent holder for one patent for 20 years.
If the alternative industry is not created, the patent holder can expect more than 20 years of massive profits. Dwindling supply is no problem for petro companies -- price of fuel increase equals greater profits, and fewer units that need to be sold (therefore, fewer expenses per dollar of revenue).
Particularly, due to the infusion of cash that occurs, if the industry is successful, it is likely to lead to further research efforts and alternatives, further development leading to the obsolencence of that patent even before the 20 years.
The holder of that one patent then is at no advantage compared to the other patent holders. As oil companies, they have a competitive edge, due to their entrenched position, and already built out infrastructure, contractual agreements, etc.
How about we declare "eminent domain" over their IP, since it's a "critical" need for national security?
The federal government CAN do that; they actually have the legal authority to do so under the constitution.
Actually -- patents are government issued, and they are not a contract between the government and the patent holder; they are grants by the government, so one piece of legislation could declare specific patents invalid.
However, there is a requirement in the constitution that the owner must be fairly compensated for private property taken for public use. If you read this as the government seizing the patent, then that means the gov't has to pay the company the fair market value for their patent, which could be a tough question to answer....
OK then, let's revisit this conversation 5-10 years from now and see exactly how far Butamax has gone in delivering biobutanol to the public for consumption. Bet you it won't be any further than me driving an electric car with large scale NiMH batteries.
No... because the patent trolls arrested development now.
In 5 or 10 years, they will have the patents to a next critical step.... required to actually produce/use that Butamax.
Alternative energy is dependant on more than just one specific technology.
There are lots of technologies required to actually produce biofuels or to utilize them for the production of energy. And if you are artificially prevented by a patent from getting past any one critical step, the alternative technology won't be practical. There are and will be lots of places they can stop you from making/using Butamax.
Due to the patents, there will be very few R&D attempts by others. Translation: less competition, less innovation, lower chance the technology develops, and with fewer people working on it -- it will be easy for the Oil companies to make sure they do any "development" / "invention" needed to get more patents FIRST. Their patent lasts 20 years from the date of issue (usually 5 or so years after the date of application), so for all intents and purposes, they have a lock on that one patented thing for 30 - 35 years.
Oh right... each patent is just one small invention required to produce and use the biofuel.
Plenty of time to figure out the 'next things' companies developing the technology need, and get patents for those before the patent they have expires.
If they just make sure to get a new patent locking down a "next step" once every 10 years, then nobody will ever come up with the technology.
That is, unless their competitor somehow works somehow in complete secret at a very fast pace, even somehow managing to avoid Oil company spies/corporate espionage, and then still comes out with completed technology and patents that.
Still, it takes 5+ years or so for such R and D anyways
They own the patents in the first place for the purpose of trolling.
It's not a question of them donating them or not, they spent money buying up and getting patents to obstruct alternative energy in as many ways as possible, to protect their business of selling fossil fuels, which are more profitable for them to sell than to sell alternatives, let alone spending all that money actually developing any of the technologies they got the patents to.
silver is going up in price. Your new tablet will be worth it's weight in base metal in a year or two.
Indeed... I would take a bar of .999 silver of equal weight to an iPad any day.
In 3 or 4 years, it will probably still be worth less than an iPad sells for at that time. But that will be because the 16gb iPads will be selling for $2000 or so.
There's a reason "sale of stolen goods" is illegal. The "i'm just a third party" excuse doesn't work.
If that were true, all the pawn store owners in town would be in jail, and eBay would be among the web sites shut down by the feds for facilitating trafficking in stolen goods.
You're talking about people aiding and abetting a criminal act, which is an entirely different story.
If you are a content delivery network, and you allow people to engage your services to distribute their content you are not distributing their content
Your agreement with them can also include a requirement that they actually have the right to distribute the content.
If they cannot, you as service provider are protected by the DMCA safe harbor, unless your company has employees knowing that certain content a customer is distributing is illegal for them to redistribute.
It's not in the interest of the public good for our public services to nanny your kids 24/7.
But it's in the interests of the public nanny state.
Produce kids who are not self-sufficient, and you can guarantee they will depend on the nanny state and entitlement programs for the rest of their lives; which further cements the political position of the powers that be.
Why do they have to do it at 8:00pm?
To make sure they are at home, awake, and studying at that time; instead of at a friends house drinking, OR sleeping when the school has dictated they should be finishing their homework?
Am I missing something here? What's so special about a device that takes EM radiation and
transforms it into heat? A black block of steel does the same thing.
They're calling it a coherent perfect absorber... presumably, because it somehow accomplishes the feet of absorbing all (or nearly all) the light.
A black block of steel reflects some light. Some loss due to reflection instead of absorption. Which has some implications, at least, inside optical computer microchips, where reflected light could cause interference.
Unless I'm missing something, this is horribly vulnerable if an attacker can "borrow" your disk at multiple snaps in time
Not that an attacker "borrowing" the disk multiple times is considered a threat; if you are using only this scheme.
If you want to defend against that, layer whole disk encryption with XEX-AES on top of this scheme.
And use a removable hardware device for the 'key disk' that gets locked up in a vault separate from the vault the hard disk is locked up, except when the uber-sensitive PC is in use.
The importance of physical security should not be underestimated in preventing hard disk 'borrowing'
One could also think about using fiberoptic cable instead of copper for energy transmission, but I don't see a real application for that (except maybe some exotic noise issues).
I suppose the question is... what the losses would be due to conversions; and losses over the cable distance would be, compared to transmitting electrical current over the same distances?
If it turned out to be more efficient, then one could imagine high powered transmission lines being replaced with lasers and anti-lasers and cable buried at each end :-)
It would be more expensive, but that would solve the problem of weather anomalies destroying transmission lines. Which currently cannot be buried due to inefficiency / losses through soil.
It would also eliminate electrocution risk. If someone accidentally cut into a transmission line, the situation could be signalled by the anti-laser end, causing its paired transmitter to reduce power near zero and identify the location of the break.
I think when you say "once", you mean, perhaps "1 trillion times" if you're filling up a 1 TB hard drive.
I mean that you generate all values required for every bit position on the disk exactly once.
And specifically ignoring any risk that is created, because in some cases, someone can reliably recover old versions of a bit position that was XOR'ed with the same key bit position, if a disk sector is ever overwritten with new data (when new random bits on the key disk are not generated for the data being overwritten).
How will you certify this home-built apparatus to ensure that the numbers it generators are truly random and there are no biases in your nanosecond timer due to EMF interference or temperature fluctuations that could be exploited to attack the randomness of the data?
I won't. Who said anything about making this at home?
Right, but the hard part is getting the truely random data - and refreshing it periodically so you can do "encryption key changes" which you will likely also have to do to survive a security audit.
No. I am suggesting you implement your whole drive encryption scheme on top of this. This total scheme is still not secure against someone stealing the computer system; since both the key drive and the data drive are stored in it. I do not suggest this eliminates the need or utility of also encrypting the volume on top of it. But it is certainly a formidable barrier to any attack effort.
Proper place for the drive keying scheme would be a "failsafe" for organizations who are not satisfied that AES256 encryption is secure to just re-sell the drive after formatting.
With the keying scheme and encryption; there is then simply no justification for the ecological impact of destroying hard drives instead of proper recycling.
On my Core i7, /dev/urandom generates pseudo-random numbers at maybe 500 GB/day. A true RNG will be much, much slower.
Your i7's ability to compute random numbers has nothing to do with the rate that true random numbers can be collected using suitable hardware. Your 500gb per day corresponds to approximately 5.92 megabytes per second, which is really quite poor, in terms of performance. This is what happens when you try to execute elaborate computational algorithms; that by no mean indicates random numbers cannot be generated quickly.
The largest Enterprise SSDs that exist right now are ~100gb
That means, you need approximately 858993459200 random bits.
To do that in one hour, you need 238609294bps aka 28.4 megabytes per second.
Anyways, at your slow rate of RNG it would only take 4.8 hours.
Not like it will be a problem for the manufacturer of the "key DISKs". Parallelism can be used to produce output at a high rate, and there are high-speed random number generation methods suitable for OTP use.
You had better choose your random number generator wisely, or your data may not be as secure as you think.
You don't have to use a "random number generator". You can capture truly random values, since you only have to do it once.
For example, you can hook up a USB geiger counter, place it near a decaying radioactive sample, and collect values measuring the nanosecond timings between photons triggering the counter.
Why not just use a proven encryption method to encrypt everything, then even if someone acquires all of your drives,
There is no such thing as proven encryption. Any encryption algorithm is subject to possibly being broken. And having vulnerabilities. It is possible someone has already broken AES and can decrypt any ciphertext, but they have just not revealed that fact to the public yet.
Entropy methods of masking data involving truly random values cannot be "cracked" by brute forced by finding a hole in a cipher, because there is no cipher.
the data is still secure. (assuming proper key management, of course).
The data is more secure than if it had been plaintext. The data is less secure than if the drive had been destroyed
With a 'key drive' or 'one time pad' that is not disposed with the drive, the data is just as secure as if the drive had been destroyed, assuming a valid implementation of the OTP method.
That said, it would be nice if there was some standard way of doing this.
Wouldn't it be even cooler if they made it part of the ATA standard itself, so you could send a single disk command to immediately commit to secure destruction of the entire volume.... such that even if someone powered down in the middle of an erase and powered the drive back up, the circuit boards inside the drive would just continue the committed physical media secure erase rather than respond to any further read commands, or enable any type of inquiries/recovery efforts?
Instead of using a SSD use an array of SSDs; with array pairs randomly chosen from a massive pile.
When writing a block, XOR it by a random number of equal size.
Write the random bits to one SSD, write the XOR'ed result to the other SSD.
Then the data cannot be derived from either SSD alone, and neither alone gives you any better chance of getting the data than if you just had a bunch of random bits.
I call this RAID -1 (RAID negative 1), or the opposite of redundant mirroring. That is... without both disks, you have nothing.
Now then... you can call one disk the 'data disk' and the other disk the 'key disk'. The key disk can be written to one time, during initial provisioning of the array, and never needs to be written to again. Therefore instead of being an actual "SSD" the "Key SSD" can be some type of inexpensive read-optimized write-once memory.
It could even be a little chip that gets plugged into the "data SSD" and acts like a read-only secondary hard disk.
When you need to replace your primary SSD because it has run out of write cycles, that's no problem... just DD it to a shiny new SSD, and insert. Put the same "key SSD" in place. All you need to do is ensure the "key SSD" is at least as large in size and has at least as many random bits as the data SSD has capacity.
The old data SSD is worthless and completely unreadable without the "key disk", and there's no reason to destroy it, as long as the "key SSD" remains secure
As for the "key SSD"... there is no reason to ever get rid of it, since it can be re-used without issue, it will never run out of write cycles, because it's never written to under normal operation. Since it can basically be a big hardwired ROM chip, using inexpensive burned fuse links, write-once PROM, it probably costs $10 or less.
If you do choose to get rid of the key SSD... you can make the chance of someone ever putting together the data ssd and the matching key SSD less than lottery odds.
If it's a cheap key device, just melt down the key device and send it for recycling, with minimal ecological damage compared to scrapping large volumes of SSDs.
In the OP situation, the only time to suggest changing the password is on the way out the door. After the door has closed, I agree it's too late.
I think there might be a little more leeway than that :)
There is one other way it's valid... in writing very soon after you are out the door.
Because putting it in writing is sensible and the explanation is obvious: by putting it in writing, you can make sure you documentation for future purposes.
And you cannot be expected to type the formal letter you need in order to put it in writing, while security is escorting you out the door with your stuff, after having taken all your keys, company cell phone, laptop, etc.
However, if you wait 6 - 12 months to do it; that will rightly raise suspicions. If you felt you had some kind of duty or obligation to inform/remind them, then why did you wait so long?
But why doesnt the author simply re-license it as something other than GPLv3 for the App Stores version?
Because he doesn't want to? Because it's still possible for a distributor and a recipient of the APP to further redistribute and still comply with the GPL, as long as GPL-compliant access to the source code is provided through some method?
Microsoft is basically a third party here. They are neither a licensee nor a licensor of the software. They are a vendor who performs some important tasks required by the APP creator to redistribute their software.
When you redistribute a program under the GPLv3, you grant the receiver a license to any patents that you own and that are used by that program.
Only if your only right to redistribute is the one provided by the GPLv3
If you are acting as an agent of the copyright owner, or you have been given your own redistribution license from the copyright owner, you do not necessarily have to follow the GPL in regards to your redistribution of the work.
For example, if the owner of the work hires another company called Content Delivery Network Co. to run the FTP/HTTP servers to distribute the owner's work, which the author will provide to them, and they'll provide web sites and mirror servers to make available.
Content Delivery Network Co distributes the work; however, they are not bound by the GPL in regards to redistribution. They are bound solely by their agreement with the copyright owner.
Sure I do. I didn't do it, so they can't prove I did. And I get to rub it in their faces- "You fired me, a competent employee, and hired some losers who can't even change a password. What idiots!!".
The best thing to do in such circumstances is probably to just let yourself forget what your old password is. Providing you were smart, it is a strong password, and difficult to remember, it will be forgotten eventually.
Just don't try to remember it or use any new password similar to it.
but is it my responsibility to suggest they change the password? especially since a 'professional' it outsourcing company took it over?
The problem is 'suggesting they changed the password' is proof that although you no longer work for them, you tried using your credentials to regain access to their system.
If they are dicks, they might call up the police and press charges for unauthorized access to their computer system, even if you think you're just trying to be helpful, testing to make sure your creds are no longer valid.
Practically there is nothing like a Kill Switch! Only certain ISP's could be asked to make changes in their routers. The term Kill Switch is just a Metaphor
That's probably not what they'd do. They'd ask ISPs and telco providers ahead of time to identify major circuits providing internet connectivity.
And the kill switch would be either sending all the telco providers orders to cut those particular fibers.
OR: CALEA-style requirement for telco characters to incorporate "Lawful Disconnect" technology along with their normal "Lawful Intercept" technology, to allow law enforcement to encumber against telcos for all the circuits as they deem essential to shutdown to break internet connectivity for users and critical infrastructure.
It may even be possible law enforcement could add "Remote disconnect" as a required option for Lawful Intercept technology in the future, regardless of legislative action -- if congress doesn't pass the law, and the executive branch decide they really want a kill switch.