That is great that you are a fan of TCPA. But its existence could lead to other things down the line.
Once it is widespread some evil corporation might try to influence the government to mandate that it be present in all computer hardware sold in the USA. While this in itself wouldn't be bad, it is just a hop, skip and a jump from mandating something such as Palladium and full DRM on all computers, since the trusted hardware will already be there!
If you don't think it could happen just look at recent bad legislation such as the DMCA and the Mickey Mouse Protection Act. Now imagine both the entertainment lobby and some of the software lobby bearing down on congress. Are your senators going to stand up to them? Mine won't.
The USA isn't interested in free trade when it comes to sugar cane. It would hurt the corn market and hurt the cane industry in Hawaii and Florida. Of course the cane industry is a heavily subsidized environmental disaster, but the politics of the situation keeps it going. It would also mean that our Coca-cola would taste like it should after 20 years of tasting awful. I am for importing sugar cane purely for the improvement in the taste of soft drinks, but I think that few people have even noticed or care.
On cold days in Brazil it is hard to start an alcohol based car. Luckily there aren't that many cold days in Brazil. It wouldn't fly in the USA though since much of the nation experiences winter.
Also, after reaching a high of 50%, isn't the ratio of pure alcohol based cars in Brazil dropping quickly?
Finally, alcohol for fuel in the USA comes from corn. I don't know if the government subsidizes sugar cane production in Brazil, but corn is highly subsidized in the USA. It costs much more to produce fuel from corn than the fuel is worth. I have also seen studies that indicate that it consumes more fuel than it produces. It is actually a wasteful process, that is most meant to line the pockets of ADM.
HW vendors don't support Linux for a variety of reasons. One is that they don't see it as a big enough markert. Another is that they fear/dislike/don't understand the GPL. Finally, why write a driver when someone else will write it for you for free!
Some vendors compromise and just release info to help others write the driver.
I am not sure what you mean by "Linux wants to do everything its own way." That seems like an arguement more easily used against MS than Linux.
The articles that I've read (sorry no links, it was a while ago) said that someone would set up a room with 8-12 machines in it, each with a copy of EQ on it. They would then have people come in and do shift work, so the machines were occupied 24 hours a day. The players would work as a team, everyone had high level characters quickly, and you were paid to play. So the problems of searching for a party and having plenty of playing time are solved.
p.s. This was occuring in Mexico, in the back rooms of internet cafes.
I agree that the limits and weaknesses of any such system should be discussed, probed, evaluated, and so forth, and that the process should be public and done prior to roll-out. I just don't think that many on/. are qualified to do so. The weaknesses that people on/. dream up are silly and do not advance the understanding of the subject. Mostly they serve to cause the/. community to think that the things are worse than they really are. This is "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" played out again and again everyday. The editors and moderators just feed the fire given that they don't understand the technology.
I witnessed one swimming in an open-air sewer in Brazil. It took the firefighters over an hour to get it in a cage. It weighed over 150 pounds. In case you wondering they are called capivara, though the spelling varies.
It doesn't matter if it's a distro from "Joe's Baitshop and Linux Consulting" or Redhat. If something is sold with the expectation that it will work and it doesn't, it's not the buyer's fault.
If you know who the major players are and you choose to buy from someone else then some of the responsibility for that decision falls on you. Plus if you are a journalist and are doing this to find out if Linux is any good then your methods are suspect. All that he did was find out that some flavor of Linux is bad. If he had gone with one of the big boys this would be more interesting.
You actually bring up another point that wasn't covered elsewhere:
The F/OSS crowd usually don't want the vendors to charge money for software, saying that they should make their money via service and support. What happens when someone buys into that line and the service and support aren't there?
Then people publish articles about what a crap distro it is (but actually name names) and then nobody buys it and it goes away. Also if you spent lots of $$$$ on the software I would imagine that lawsuits might occur.
That is acutally an interesting example, though not really applicable to the current discussion.
In any case there are cards out there now that do an on-card match, so if the right fingerprint isn't present the card won't do the transaction. Also the fingerprint reader is built into the card reader and can send the fingerprint directly to the card, so it can't be stored on the computer attached to the reader.
As for high-profile breaks of "secure" consumer systems, many of these systems used weak crypto, applied a protocol incorrectly, or tried to store keys in software. I would expect/hope that if the US government goes with an electronic passport system they would have the NSA spend some quality time with it before it is released to the public. That should make you feel either more or less secure depending on how malicious you feel the NSA is.
Good analogy. Of course if you look at this as a "religious war" and then look that the history of religious wars, and then take into account the anonymous nature of message boards you can see how things might deteriorate quickly.
I agree that the article was not a call for help, but again that shows a misunderstanding of the open-source process. By publishing an article that says, "Linux doesn't work" without disclosing exactly how it didn't work, he is doing what he feels is appropriate. But the community wants the information about what didn't work so they can fix it. Him simply stating that something didn't work is not only not productive, but it is counter-productive because is discourages others from trying Linux.
Yes I understand that this puts everyone in the position of being a beta-tester for things that don't work, but that is how the system has come so far so fast. If you want to show up now and have a hassle-free system without being careful about buying the most supported hardware and not buying a mainstream distro then you are bound to annoy a few people.
Again, Windows and Linux work in different ways. One of those is that if you want to avoid problems you should be careful about what hardware you buy. another is that if you have a problem and you are going to write about it you will really annoy people by not exploring all options for fixing it.
Oh please! There haven't been deep technical threads on/. for years.:)
I am not suggesting that any system will have perfect security. Also if the people designing the system are malicious then they can pretty much do as they please. What I am saying is that your assumption that the master keys will be on a post-it note somewhere is flawed and that fears of everyone and their dogs being able to war drive your wallet are overblown and not based on an understanding of the technologies involved.
If someone would post a detailed explaination of how they would war drive a wallet (or even read the contents of their own card) and how they would get around the standard security procedures then I would be impressed. Instead we have posts that show no understanding of the technology that leap to unwarranted conclusions. Every smart card story (and blurb) is full of posts like this, which are no more than FUD. I would love to see some expertise here, but I haven't, so maybe I am missing something. Are you an expert?
I'm not saying that there is an obligation. I'm saying that they are a resource that that is willing to help, and he snubbed them by intially refusing to disclose the specs of the card. As the first letter that he published indicates, the Linux world works in a different way than the Windows world and you can't take you assumptions from one into the other.
Did I say there is anything wrong with it? All I am saying is that the community operates on two different levels (community support and vendor support) and by not posting the specs of the card he basically insulted the community. Then he wonders why he got flamed.
The author also entirely misses another related point. That is that people wanted to know exactly what hardware he was trying to get working so that they could verify the problem and fix it. The community aspect cuts both ways, and if he isn't willing to share then he isn't helping.
The fact is that linux drivers are often not written by the hardware manufacturer, they are written by users. So if you have a problem you have to turn to other users and give them the information they need to help you. Of course since he paid "near windows prices" for a distro, he expected that help from the distro vendor. Often Linux support comes from other users and the driver developers.
A contactless reader can be the size of a pack of cards and could be attached to a PDA, so you wouldn't need a suitcase, it could be in your pocket. However if the application uses encryption appropriately then this isn't a concern, which was my point above.
If the antenna goes but not the chip and it has contacts then it will still work in contact mode. I've tested this out. So contacts are your first back up. It might be possible though to power the card through the antenna in such a way as to make the card not function in either mode while it is in range of the signal.
If someone starts jamming airports frequently you could put he reader in a cage and make people throw their cards into the cage.
If the portable reader contains keys then this is a problem. If the portable reader has a network connection back to the server that has an HSM that contains the keys then this isn't a problem. Or at least someone extracting the keys from the reader isn't a problem. Abuse by an authorized user would be a problem in any system.
You are also assuming that a pin or some other user authentication wouldn't be needed to gain access to the information.
So you do raise valid concerns but they can be addressed. The concern of identity theft raised by the article seems very avoidable though.
I would love to read the article but you will need to post it as a link. What you have posted doesn't work and my attempts to manipulate it to work have failed.
I don't know of any studies on how easy it is to jam an ISO 14443 system. It would be interesting to know. If the cards were dual-interface and had contacts as well then you could simply use the contacts as a backup.
There are certainly some "ifs" involved and a more involved discussion would be needed to examine them. What irks me is that/.ers assume that it someone says, "RFID" or, "smart cards" that anyone and everyone will be able to read the contents off it as you walk by. This is simply not the case.
Also the system really isn't that complex. This sort of thing is standard practice.
You are correct that DirecTV has had constant problems. They have a difficult situation in that they are not in constant two-way communication with the cards when in use and each card does not have a unique key.
I don't know what the readers have to do with this. The keys don't have to live in the readers, they can be in a hardware security module in a server in a physically secure facility.
You are correct in that they could be some security breakthrough in before the cards expire, but unless it involves a way to crack 3DES or AES quickly then I see how a large amount of damage could be done.
You are confusing two different issues. I was stating that if you don't have the right keys you can't talk to the card. I haven't said anything about whether you can trust the government. I also haven't said anything about whether a program like this is even needed or effective. All I have said is that an unauthorized person isn't going to be able to get next to you and read your card.
Your issue is a different one. You are saying that someone who does have the keys is going to try to talk to the card in inappropriate places.
The first line of defense is that the technology is only good for distances of 10 cm (and then in ideal conditions) so I am not too worried about that. If there is tech to used smart cards at distances beyond 1 meter please tell me, I would like to know about it.
Also note that this assumes a contactless smart card. A traditional contact smart card needs to be inserted into a reader to be read.
I don't carry my passport with me unless I am traveling internationally, so this isn't too much of a concern. If you are still worried you should buy a little cage for your card.
The only way that I can think of to guarantee that the card doesn't have any secret features is to do a full audit of the hardware, software, and tools used to create the hardware and software.
Of course if the government is tracking you everywhere you should also wear gloves to prevent leaving fingerprints, wear a mask to prevent facial recognition, close your eyes to prevent retina and iris scanning, wear earmuffs to prevent ear geometry scanning, and walk funny to prevent gait recognition. I am probably leaving something out. Let's see, don't grab anything so they can't use hand geometry on you, and don't sign anything so they can't use signature recognition, and don't say anything so they can't use voice recognition. Especially don't use a cell phone, those can be tracked. Take the plates off your car. Don't leave any bodily fluids around so they can't use DNA to track you. Only pee in a secure toilet. Be careful with the dandruff. Don't spend any money other than coins because the transaction will either be electronic or involve serial numbers on bills.
I am exagerrating here, but if they are going to invade your privacy there are plenty of ways to do it. I am sure there will be a market for privacy wallets.
Slashdot Mirror
this was revealed decades ago in the book Splinter of the Mind's Eye. which I read when I was about nine years old, so I could be wrong about that.
Once it is widespread some evil corporation might try to influence the government to mandate that it be present in all computer hardware sold in the USA. While this in itself wouldn't be bad, it is just a hop, skip and a jump from mandating something such as Palladium and full DRM on all computers, since the trusted hardware will already be there!
If you don't think it could happen just look at recent bad legislation such as the DMCA and the Mickey Mouse Protection Act. Now imagine both the entertainment lobby and some of the software lobby bearing down on congress. Are your senators going to stand up to them? Mine won't.
Tools might not be evil, but Disney and MS are.
Exactly! And given how pivotal Florida has become for the presidential election nobody is going to suggest taking pork away from them.
The USA isn't interested in free trade when it comes to sugar cane. It would hurt the corn market and hurt the cane industry in Hawaii and Florida. Of course the cane industry is a heavily subsidized environmental disaster, but the politics of the situation keeps it going. It would also mean that our Coca-cola would taste like it should after 20 years of tasting awful. I am for importing sugar cane purely for the improvement in the taste of soft drinks, but I think that few people have even noticed or care.
Also, after reaching a high of 50%, isn't the ratio of pure alcohol based cars in Brazil dropping quickly?
Finally, alcohol for fuel in the USA comes from corn. I don't know if the government subsidizes sugar cane production in Brazil, but corn is highly subsidized in the USA. It costs much more to produce fuel from corn than the fuel is worth. I have also seen studies that indicate that it consumes more fuel than it produces. It is actually a wasteful process, that is most meant to line the pockets of ADM.
Some vendors compromise and just release info to help others write the driver.
I am not sure what you mean by "Linux wants to do everything its own way." That seems like an arguement more easily used against MS than Linux.
p.s. This was occuring in Mexico, in the back rooms of internet cafes.
I agree that the limits and weaknesses of any such system should be discussed, probed, evaluated, and so forth, and that the process should be public and done prior to roll-out. I just don't think that many on /. are qualified to do so. The weaknesses that people on /. dream up are silly and do not advance the understanding of the subject. Mostly they serve to cause the /. community to think that the things are worse than they really are. This is "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" played out again and again everyday. The editors and moderators just feed the fire given that they don't understand the technology.
I witnessed one swimming in an open-air sewer in Brazil. It took the firefighters over an hour to get it in a cage. It weighed over 150 pounds. In case you wondering they are called capivara, though the spelling varies.
If you know who the major players are and you choose to buy from someone else then some of the responsibility for that decision falls on you. Plus if you are a journalist and are doing this to find out if Linux is any good then your methods are suspect. All that he did was find out that some flavor of Linux is bad. If he had gone with one of the big boys this would be more interesting.
You actually bring up another point that wasn't covered elsewhere: The F/OSS crowd usually don't want the vendors to charge money for software, saying that they should make their money via service and support. What happens when someone buys into that line and the service and support aren't there?
Then people publish articles about what a crap distro it is (but actually name names) and then nobody buys it and it goes away. Also if you spent lots of $$$$ on the software I would imagine that lawsuits might occur.
In any case there are cards out there now that do an on-card match, so if the right fingerprint isn't present the card won't do the transaction. Also the fingerprint reader is built into the card reader and can send the fingerprint directly to the card, so it can't be stored on the computer attached to the reader.
As for high-profile breaks of "secure" consumer systems, many of these systems used weak crypto, applied a protocol incorrectly, or tried to store keys in software. I would expect/hope that if the US government goes with an electronic passport system they would have the NSA spend some quality time with it before it is released to the public. That should make you feel either more or less secure depending on how malicious you feel the NSA is.
Good analogy. Of course if you look at this as a "religious war" and then look that the history of religious wars, and then take into account the anonymous nature of message boards you can see how things might deteriorate quickly.
Yes I understand that this puts everyone in the position of being a beta-tester for things that don't work, but that is how the system has come so far so fast. If you want to show up now and have a hassle-free system without being careful about buying the most supported hardware and not buying a mainstream distro then you are bound to annoy a few people.
Again, Windows and Linux work in different ways. One of those is that if you want to avoid problems you should be careful about what hardware you buy. another is that if you have a problem and you are going to write about it you will really annoy people by not exploring all options for fixing it.
I am not suggesting that any system will have perfect security. Also if the people designing the system are malicious then they can pretty much do as they please. What I am saying is that your assumption that the master keys will be on a post-it note somewhere is flawed and that fears of everyone and their dogs being able to war drive your wallet are overblown and not based on an understanding of the technologies involved.
If someone would post a detailed explaination of how they would war drive a wallet (or even read the contents of their own card) and how they would get around the standard security procedures then I would be impressed. Instead we have posts that show no understanding of the technology that leap to unwarranted conclusions. Every smart card story (and blurb) is full of posts like this, which are no more than FUD. I would love to see some expertise here, but I haven't, so maybe I am missing something. Are you an expert?
I'm not saying that there is an obligation. I'm saying that they are a resource that that is willing to help, and he snubbed them by intially refusing to disclose the specs of the card. As the first letter that he published indicates, the Linux world works in a different way than the Windows world and you can't take you assumptions from one into the other.
Did I say there is anything wrong with it? All I am saying is that the community operates on two different levels (community support and vendor support) and by not posting the specs of the card he basically insulted the community. Then he wonders why he got flamed.
The fact is that linux drivers are often not written by the hardware manufacturer, they are written by users. So if you have a problem you have to turn to other users and give them the information they need to help you. Of course since he paid "near windows prices" for a distro, he expected that help from the distro vendor. Often Linux support comes from other users and the driver developers.
A contactless reader can be the size of a pack of cards and could be attached to a PDA, so you wouldn't need a suitcase, it could be in your pocket. However if the application uses encryption appropriately then this isn't a concern, which was my point above.
If someone starts jamming airports frequently you could put he reader in a cage and make people throw their cards into the cage.
You are also assuming that a pin or some other user authentication wouldn't be needed to gain access to the information.
So you do raise valid concerns but they can be addressed. The concern of identity theft raised by the article seems very avoidable though.
I don't know of any studies on how easy it is to jam an ISO 14443 system. It would be interesting to know. If the cards were dual-interface and had contacts as well then you could simply use the contacts as a backup.
Also the system really isn't that complex. This sort of thing is standard practice.
I don't know what the readers have to do with this. The keys don't have to live in the readers, they can be in a hardware security module in a server in a physically secure facility.
You are correct in that they could be some security breakthrough in before the cards expire, but unless it involves a way to crack 3DES or AES quickly then I see how a large amount of damage could be done.
put the keys in an IBM 4758 back in the server room. You can have the 4758 do the crypto.
Your issue is a different one. You are saying that someone who does have the keys is going to try to talk to the card in inappropriate places.
The first line of defense is that the technology is only good for distances of 10 cm (and then in ideal conditions) so I am not too worried about that. If there is tech to used smart cards at distances beyond 1 meter please tell me, I would like to know about it.
Also note that this assumes a contactless smart card. A traditional contact smart card needs to be inserted into a reader to be read.
I don't carry my passport with me unless I am traveling internationally, so this isn't too much of a concern. If you are still worried you should buy a little cage for your card.
The only way that I can think of to guarantee that the card doesn't have any secret features is to do a full audit of the hardware, software, and tools used to create the hardware and software.
Of course if the government is tracking you everywhere you should also wear gloves to prevent leaving fingerprints, wear a mask to prevent facial recognition, close your eyes to prevent retina and iris scanning, wear earmuffs to prevent ear geometry scanning, and walk funny to prevent gait recognition. I am probably leaving something out. Let's see, don't grab anything so they can't use hand geometry on you, and don't sign anything so they can't use signature recognition, and don't say anything so they can't use voice recognition. Especially don't use a cell phone, those can be tracked. Take the plates off your car. Don't leave any bodily fluids around so they can't use DNA to track you. Only pee in a secure toilet. Be careful with the dandruff. Don't spend any money other than coins because the transaction will either be electronic or involve serial numbers on bills.
I am exagerrating here, but if they are going to invade your privacy there are plenty of ways to do it. I am sure there will be a market for privacy wallets.