So Dyson says: "Independent research shows that before they even reach the washroom, paper towels can contain large communities of culturable bacteria."
Yes, but those bacteria aren't likely to cause disease in humans. As I understand it, infectious viruses don't survive for long periods of time on dry surfaces, like paper towels. If one person having a cold or the flu uses a Dyson dryer, he aerosolizes the virus into tiny droplets hanging about in the air and splashing about on the doorknob. That's where the infection of the next visitor happens.
I'm assuming that the function that produces the key used by the decrypter is well-known or is obtainable through experimentation (on other instances of the same model of phone). Even if Apple was using AES, it could still vary the function in non-cryptographically significant ways to obfuscate what it was doing (add a constant to the key, XOR particular bits, etc.) Provided that function is in hand, the set of 256-bit keys isn't numbered 2^256, but the number of likely/possible passwords. Where the password is a 4-digit PIN, that is a set comprised of 10,000 elements, which is trivial to brute-force.
Yes... and now that I think about it, it would make more sense to place that into EEPROM, because there would already be that kind of memory on the SoC part (or perhaps something close by) that would hold the firmware. To convert EEPROM to PROM, all the designer would need to do is prevent the erasing voltage from reaching the memory bits. That's as simple as leaving out the path from the charge pump (or whatever is used) to the UID memory cell. I have no idea whether an EEPROM can be read without turning the circuit on. There may be no color change (in an optical/UV/XRay wavelength) to pick up on with the state change of a bit. Bummer.
An SEM must be a fun toy to fiddle with... a lot more fun than the microscopes in Biology class.
Your article is well-thought out. I would wonder, though, if the UID could be read with a simple optical microscope. Presumably the UID is written to a memory cell on the SoC using links that open (like a fuse) when a high current is passed through (like the old PROM memories used to). Those links wouldn't be embedded in layers of silicon: the opening of the link would heat up and perhaps emit material that would need to be dissipated. (The link would look like this ===-=== or this === === if open.) If such a cell is on the top, then its links are exposed and can be observed. If one didn't know the pattern used for that cell, then one could use the procedure you suggest on separate phones to deduce what it is. If one could get to that point, then one could read the UID on the target phone without modifying the SoC part (but the 'lid' would still have to come off). That makes the procedure I'm thinking about much more viable.
Those unique keys are probably recorded at the time of manufacture and saved to a DB (against the serial number of the phone or board). Apple complained about modifying their firmware to put in a backdoor bypassing the PIN entry procedure. I don't think they complained about handing over that CPU key when subpoenaed, or perhaps merely upon a request by the FBI. If the attacker knows the encryption function used by the NV memory controller, then they should be able to emulate that too.
For an attack using an emulated PIN entry, I would wonder how fast that could be done: I'd expect the software would filter out touches less than 10ms or so. (The touchscreen scan rate would have a period around that.) Using a single phone, I'd imagine you'd wind up with less than 10 potential key tries per second. Add to that the time needed to reset the emulated NAND, whatever that is, every 5 attempts or so. I think your procedure would work for a short numeric pin (with 10 possible characters, sequence length 5 or less), but more than that would seem impractical to me.
You'd have a point, if it were possible to use all combinations of a 256-bit key. It's not, however, Chances are the key is an alphanumeric sequence, less than 8 characters long (most users don't have the patience to do more than that, and most websites don't require more.) That gets you down to the neighborhood of 50^8=3.9 x 10^13, which is far less than 2^256. But they probably don't even need to do that: the password is likely a short phrase out of the Quorran or a close variation on the name of a friend or relative. They might even analyze the wear pattern on the touch screen to find likely members of the password set. I'm sure they've already realized which sets to look at to bring this down to the neighborhood of 10^10 likely combinations, which in your example would yield a solution in less than 10 iterations per GPU. Assuming they have a likely-passphrase-generator that operates using the equivalent work as the decrypting engine, 20000 GPUs operating at 100 attempts per second would take 10^(10-4-2)=10,000 seconds, or about seven days. Brute-force seems very do-able to me.
I'm sure all they're doing is taking the plastic off of the NV memory part, attaching a probe, and reading out what's there. Those dies are tested that way at the factory: there will be lands on there for a probe. The government can buy a few phones of the same model for experimentation to get it right, then read out the contents of the NV memory of the phone they care about.
Once they have those contents, it's just a matter of brute-force decrypting whatever is in the personal/confidential files. Remember it is the files that are encrypted, not the memory itself. All that is needed is enough processing power to run through all the likely password combinations until they get something that looks like it was humanly input. It's not that difficult if you have the phone in your possession and a supercomputer cluster at your disposal.
"Being somewhere they are not supposed to be is not, nor should it ever be, a valid reason to murder them."
Actually, it is if being there constitutes a felony (like a burglar entering your house, for example.) I should mention that "murder" is an unlawful killing: killing in self-defense isn't murder.
"At one time, the US Constitution said it was legal for one human being to own another."
Which right was abolished by the 13th Amendment in 1865. The people decided long ago that slavery wasn't a good thing. They decided gun control (likely as proposed by this study) wasn't a good thing even earlier than that with the 2nd Amendment. The opinion of the populace doesn't seem to be moving in the direction of the promoters of restricting guns....
Yes, an interface is covered by copyright, but it is also covered by the fair use and implied license doctrines. The fair use doctrine is (in the U.S.) a statutory right of the public to use a copyrighted work that is "fair". If you bought a movie on VHS (years ago), for example, you can convert it to DVD format for your own use without paying the publisher a second time. You don't get to redistribute the movie to others, because that would impair the publisher's ability to obtain payment in the market and is not "fair".
The implied license doctrine creates a legal (judicially-created) right and comes about from the way in which a work is distributed. The web code delivered to your browser to read this page is a good example. When you submit an HTTP query for this page, the server delivers a copy of my words and a copy of the web code your browser interprets to display them. By submitting a comment, I have given the world an implied license to have those words copied to your computer, and Slashdot has given an implied license for the web code to your browser.
The interface here is used to operate either a machine or a software package, which machine or package was purchased for a particular purpose. The interface must be used to operate it, and therefore the supplier gave an implied license to copy those parts of it needed to make it operable. Using the interface would probably also be considered fair, if the machine or package was not copied.
These are old issues in the legal system... move along.
The reason that we have all of those ships in the first place is to have the option to use them, if needed. Here, the Navy is creating the option of sourcing fuel from domestic, non-petroleum sources. Add to that the building of the infrastructure and development of efficient techniques of production for military and domestic use, and you've got nothing but gravy (which is not quite a biofuel...)
So long as the admiralty keeps the options of nuclear and petroleum fuels as alternatives, I expect this will benefit far more than it will cost.
Ascention Island is a hunk of volcanic rock stuck in the middle of the atlantic. Does a country really get jurisdiction of 234,291 sq km (a zone roughly 500km across) out of that? I suspect someone is overstating the claim.
Wow! Someone that gets it! There will always be ways of keeping one's communications private, if one makes the effort to do so. A backdoor in a miscreant's operating system software won't help at all where he can use a die, a pad of paper and a match. That there is so much discussion about encryption in political circles betrays the fact that our politicians don't have the first clue what they are talking about.
From the title here: "A Typo Almost Derailed Paris Climate Deal"
To "derail" something implies that it was on the rails. It never was, and it still is not. The only thing these parties of this "agreement" have "agreed" upon is that they'll make a big dog-and-pony show for their political constituents. Mr. Kerry: declaring oneself to be responsible and caring does not make one so.
The whole point of intellectual property (whether it be patents, trademarks or copyrights) is to make the subject matter available to the public where it can be seen. Agreeing not to conduct the theft of IP is like agreeing not to pee on the plains of Mars. Meaningless.
What I don't see here is anything about military espionage. Someone has been lifting the personal identities of government employees, which could be used to extort them into revealing secrets. Where's the hotline for that?
This is just another meaningless dog and pony show from our vanity-trumps-everything-in-chief.
And that is why Lexmark will fail. The first sale doctrine protects subsequent purchasers of a patented product from having to secure a license. Here, the refiller will be protected. Now if Lexmark wants to enforce this, they can go after the persons who originally bought the cartridges, if they can find them and if the legal costs and bad mojo are worth it to them. (I'm guessing not.)
This is not the first time a patent holder has threatened to enforce a patent beyond what the law permits. A weak patent that others are afraid to violate is better than a strong patent, enforced or not. Lexmark will make as much of this as they can, because it will scare off the refillers and increase their profits.
Folks: the Copyright Office has no enforcement powers. All it is is a repository for registrations of claims of copyrights. Modernizing the copyright office is like modernizing the drivers license division of a state: it doesn't affect who is allowed to drive (assuming that it performs competently either way.) It is not the DL division that enforces the driving laws, it is the police and the courts. Same thing for the Copyright Office; a registration improves a plaintiff's claim, but that claim still has to be made in federal court.
The author of that article (Mr. Simmons) summarizes together a lot of past and suggested reforms. Why he does that I don't know, for restructuring and/or refinancing the Copyright Office won't change the law nor change anyone's rights.
Finally, those of you who promote shortening the copyright period of works in existence: get over it, it ain't a-gonna change. The takings clause of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution would require that everyone who had a shortened copyright would have to be compensated justly, and that would clog up the courts beyond imagination. Congress may be foolish sometimes, but it ain't that stupid! Now if you want to talk about shortening the term of copyrights that originate in the future, that's different...
I can't help but wonder whether this kind of mirror could be used to produce a highly collimated laser beam. The more regular the surface of the mirror, the more parallel the rays of light emitted. I wonder if this technology could be effectively used to make a weapon that requires less power (the light being more highly focused on the target.) Perhaps the Star Wars concept of the Reagan years has returned?
it really isn't useful except where there is a changing atmosphere and the absence of a stronger source of energy such as the Sun. I imagine there are places on the Earth where this could be used, such as deep within caves or piping. Where there is a change in humidity, there is likely to be a change in temperature too. That means that a Peltier device or a battery might be a better choice in most cases.
But I have no doubt that someone will, within a few days or hours, propose this as a solution to global warming. Let the games begin!
The model version being used for the CMIP5 simulations will soon be available in a complete package, though there are nightly snapshots of the current code repository available (including the frozen 'AR5_branch'), but users should be aware that these snapshots are presented 'as is' and are not necessarily suitable for publication-quality experiments.
In other words, the model isn't ready/reliable. Perhaps you'd better stop staring at the Sun for so long, AC: the risks to your health are much greater than those posed by Global Warming.
So says the article that we lack "the ability to adequately process the need for the whole species' long-term survival". Evolution sets forth that we compete with members of our species for resources, caring most about what happens to our relatives (those who have the most-in-common DNA). The reason we don't care what happens to the "whole species" is because that is worse for us as individuals, in the context of the propagation of our DNA.
Oh, and climate change doesn't concern the "whole species" either. It concerns only those who have beach-front property and those who will have to move from arid landscapes. The "whole species" will do fine through GW.
And if you read the website for the Fifth CMIP (at your link on the first page), you'll see that it:
provide(s) a multi-model context for 1) assessing the mechanisms responsible for model differences in poorly understood feedbacks associated with the carbon cycle and with clouds, 2) examining climate “predictability” and exploring the ability of models to predict climate on decadal time scales, and, more generally, 3) determining why similarly forced models produce a range of responses.
The snippet from the press release doesn't identify the model(s) used; it doesn't even specify a model associated with the Fifth CMIP. So even if one were do "dig around" as you suggest, he would still have no idea what model(s) were used to generate their projections. Now when you get around to wrapping your head around that, then you can turn in your ignorance to overlooking the admission on the CMIP website that (1) the models they consider produce significantly different projections and (2) the feedbacks are "poorly understood".
Slashdot Mirror
So Dyson says: "Independent research shows that before they even reach the washroom, paper towels can contain large communities of culturable bacteria."
Yes, but those bacteria aren't likely to cause disease in humans. As I understand it, infectious viruses don't survive for long periods of time on dry surfaces, like paper towels. If one person having a cold or the flu uses a Dyson dryer, he aerosolizes the virus into tiny droplets hanging about in the air and splashing about on the doorknob. That's where the infection of the next visitor happens.
I'm assuming that the function that produces the key used by the decrypter is well-known or is obtainable through experimentation (on other instances of the same model of phone). Even if Apple was using AES, it could still vary the function in non-cryptographically significant ways to obfuscate what it was doing (add a constant to the key, XOR particular bits, etc.) Provided that function is in hand, the set of 256-bit keys isn't numbered 2^256, but the number of likely/possible passwords. Where the password is a 4-digit PIN, that is a set comprised of 10,000 elements, which is trivial to brute-force.
Yes ... and now that I think about it, it would make more sense to place that into EEPROM, because there would already be that kind of memory on the SoC part (or perhaps something close by) that would hold the firmware. To convert EEPROM to PROM, all the designer would need to do is prevent the erasing voltage from reaching the memory bits. That's as simple as leaving out the path from the charge pump (or whatever is used) to the UID memory cell. I have no idea whether an EEPROM can be read without turning the circuit on. There may be no color change (in an optical/UV/XRay wavelength) to pick up on with the state change of a bit. Bummer.
An SEM must be a fun toy to fiddle with ... a lot more fun than the microscopes in Biology class.
Your article is well-thought out. I would wonder, though, if the UID could be read with a simple optical microscope. Presumably the UID is written to a memory cell on the SoC using links that open (like a fuse) when a high current is passed through (like the old PROM memories used to). Those links wouldn't be embedded in layers of silicon: the opening of the link would heat up and perhaps emit material that would need to be dissipated. (The link would look like this ===-=== or this === === if open.) If such a cell is on the top, then its links are exposed and can be observed. If one didn't know the pattern used for that cell, then one could use the procedure you suggest on separate phones to deduce what it is. If one could get to that point, then one could read the UID on the target phone without modifying the SoC part (but the 'lid' would still have to come off). That makes the procedure I'm thinking about much more viable.
Interesting...
Those unique keys are probably recorded at the time of manufacture and saved to a DB (against the serial number of the phone or board). Apple complained about modifying their firmware to put in a backdoor bypassing the PIN entry procedure. I don't think they complained about handing over that CPU key when subpoenaed, or perhaps merely upon a request by the FBI. If the attacker knows the encryption function used by the NV memory controller, then they should be able to emulate that too.
For an attack using an emulated PIN entry, I would wonder how fast that could be done: I'd expect the software would filter out touches less than 10ms or so. (The touchscreen scan rate would have a period around that.) Using a single phone, I'd imagine you'd wind up with less than 10 potential key tries per second. Add to that the time needed to reset the emulated NAND, whatever that is, every 5 attempts or so. I think your procedure would work for a short numeric pin (with 10 possible characters, sequence length 5 or less), but more than that would seem impractical to me.
You'd have a point, if it were possible to use all combinations of a 256-bit key. It's not, however, Chances are the key is an alphanumeric sequence, less than 8 characters long (most users don't have the patience to do more than that, and most websites don't require more.) That gets you down to the neighborhood of 50^8=3.9 x 10^13, which is far less than 2^256. But they probably don't even need to do that: the password is likely a short phrase out of the Quorran or a close variation on the name of a friend or relative. They might even analyze the wear pattern on the touch screen to find likely members of the password set. I'm sure they've already realized which sets to look at to bring this down to the neighborhood of 10^10 likely combinations, which in your example would yield a solution in less than 10 iterations per GPU. Assuming they have a likely-passphrase-generator that operates using the equivalent work as the decrypting engine, 20000 GPUs operating at 100 attempts per second would take 10^(10-4-2)=10,000 seconds, or about seven days. Brute-force seems very do-able to me.
I'm sure all they're doing is taking the plastic off of the NV memory part, attaching a probe, and reading out what's there. Those dies are tested that way at the factory: there will be lands on there for a probe. The government can buy a few phones of the same model for experimentation to get it right, then read out the contents of the NV memory of the phone they care about.
Once they have those contents, it's just a matter of brute-force decrypting whatever is in the personal/confidential files. Remember it is the files that are encrypted, not the memory itself. All that is needed is enough processing power to run through all the likely password combinations until they get something that looks like it was humanly input. It's not that difficult if you have the phone in your possession and a supercomputer cluster at your disposal.
"Being somewhere they are not supposed to be is not, nor should it ever be, a valid reason to murder them."
Actually, it is if being there constitutes a felony (like a burglar entering your house, for example.) I should mention that "murder" is an unlawful killing: killing in self-defense isn't murder.
"At one time, the US Constitution said it was legal for one human being to own another."
Which right was abolished by the 13th Amendment in 1865. The people decided long ago that slavery wasn't a good thing. They decided gun control (likely as proposed by this study) wasn't a good thing even earlier than that with the 2nd Amendment. The opinion of the populace doesn't seem to be moving in the direction of the promoters of restricting guns....
Yes, an interface is covered by copyright, but it is also covered by the fair use and implied license doctrines. The fair use doctrine is (in the U.S.) a statutory right of the public to use a copyrighted work that is "fair". If you bought a movie on VHS (years ago), for example, you can convert it to DVD format for your own use without paying the publisher a second time. You don't get to redistribute the movie to others, because that would impair the publisher's ability to obtain payment in the market and is not "fair".
The implied license doctrine creates a legal (judicially-created) right and comes about from the way in which a work is distributed. The web code delivered to your browser to read this page is a good example. When you submit an HTTP query for this page, the server delivers a copy of my words and a copy of the web code your browser interprets to display them. By submitting a comment, I have given the world an implied license to have those words copied to your computer, and Slashdot has given an implied license for the web code to your browser.
The interface here is used to operate either a machine or a software package, which machine or package was purchased for a particular purpose. The interface must be used to operate it, and therefore the supplier gave an implied license to copy those parts of it needed to make it operable. Using the interface would probably also be considered fair, if the machine or package was not copied.
These are old issues in the legal system ... move along.
The reason that we have all of those ships in the first place is to have the option to use them, if needed. Here, the Navy is creating the option of sourcing fuel from domestic, non-petroleum sources. Add to that the building of the infrastructure and development of efficient techniques of production for military and domestic use, and you've got nothing but gravy (which is not quite a biofuel...)
So long as the admiralty keeps the options of nuclear and petroleum fuels as alternatives, I expect this will benefit far more than it will cost.
Ascention Island is a hunk of volcanic rock stuck in the middle of the atlantic. Does a country really get jurisdiction of 234,291 sq km (a zone roughly 500km across) out of that? I suspect someone is overstating the claim.
Wow! Someone that gets it! There will always be ways of keeping one's communications private, if one makes the effort to do so. A backdoor in a miscreant's operating system software won't help at all where he can use a die, a pad of paper and a match. That there is so much discussion about encryption in political circles betrays the fact that our politicians don't have the first clue what they are talking about.
From the title here: "A Typo Almost Derailed Paris Climate Deal"
To "derail" something implies that it was on the rails. It never was, and it still is not. The only thing these parties of this "agreement" have "agreed" upon is that they'll make a big dog-and-pony show for their political constituents. Mr. Kerry: declaring oneself to be responsible and caring does not make one so.
The whole point of intellectual property (whether it be patents, trademarks or copyrights) is to make the subject matter available to the public where it can be seen. Agreeing not to conduct the theft of IP is like agreeing not to pee on the plains of Mars. Meaningless.
What I don't see here is anything about military espionage. Someone has been lifting the personal identities of government employees, which could be used to extort them into revealing secrets. Where's the hotline for that?
This is just another meaningless dog and pony show from our vanity-trumps-everything-in-chief.
And that is why Lexmark will fail. The first sale doctrine protects subsequent purchasers of a patented product from having to secure a license. Here, the refiller will be protected. Now if Lexmark wants to enforce this, they can go after the persons who originally bought the cartridges, if they can find them and if the legal costs and bad mojo are worth it to them. (I'm guessing not.)
This is not the first time a patent holder has threatened to enforce a patent beyond what the law permits. A weak patent that others are afraid to violate is better than a strong patent, enforced or not. Lexmark will make as much of this as they can, because it will scare off the refillers and increase their profits.
Good luck convincing a judge of that...
Folks: the Copyright Office has no enforcement powers. All it is is a repository for registrations of claims of copyrights. Modernizing the copyright office is like modernizing the drivers license division of a state: it doesn't affect who is allowed to drive (assuming that it performs competently either way.) It is not the DL division that enforces the driving laws, it is the police and the courts. Same thing for the Copyright Office; a registration improves a plaintiff's claim, but that claim still has to be made in federal court.
The author of that article (Mr. Simmons) summarizes together a lot of past and suggested reforms. Why he does that I don't know, for restructuring and/or refinancing the Copyright Office won't change the law nor change anyone's rights.
Finally, those of you who promote shortening the copyright period of works in existence: get over it, it ain't a-gonna change. The takings clause of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution would require that everyone who had a shortened copyright would have to be compensated justly, and that would clog up the courts beyond imagination. Congress may be foolish sometimes, but it ain't that stupid! Now if you want to talk about shortening the term of copyrights that originate in the future, that's different...
Yes, but this device operates on a differential of humidity. It would be useless unless there was a change in moisture in the environment.
I can't help but wonder whether this kind of mirror could be used to produce a highly collimated laser beam. The more regular the surface of the mirror, the more parallel the rays of light emitted. I wonder if this technology could be effectively used to make a weapon that requires less power (the light being more highly focused on the target.) Perhaps the Star Wars concept of the Reagan years has returned?
it really isn't useful except where there is a changing atmosphere and the absence of a stronger source of energy such as the Sun. I imagine there are places on the Earth where this could be used, such as deep within caves or piping. Where there is a change in humidity, there is likely to be a change in temperature too. That means that a Peltier device or a battery might be a better choice in most cases.
But I have no doubt that someone will, within a few days or hours, propose this as a solution to global warming. Let the games begin!
The model version being used for the CMIP5 simulations will soon be available in a complete package, though there are nightly snapshots of the current code repository available (including the frozen 'AR5_branch'), but users should be aware that these snapshots are presented 'as is' and are not necessarily suitable for publication-quality experiments.
In other words, the model isn't ready/reliable. Perhaps you'd better stop staring at the Sun for so long, AC: the risks to your health are much greater than those posed by Global Warming.
So says the article that we lack "the ability to adequately process the need for the whole species' long-term survival". Evolution sets forth that we compete with members of our species for resources, caring most about what happens to our relatives (those who have the most-in-common DNA). The reason we don't care what happens to the "whole species" is because that is worse for us as individuals, in the context of the propagation of our DNA.
Oh, and climate change doesn't concern the "whole species" either. It concerns only those who have beach-front property and those who will have to move from arid landscapes. The "whole species" will do fine through GW.
And if you read the website for the Fifth CMIP (at your link on the first page), you'll see that it:
provide(s) a multi-model context for 1) assessing the mechanisms responsible for model differences in poorly understood feedbacks associated with the carbon cycle and with clouds, 2) examining climate “predictability” and exploring the ability of models to predict climate on decadal time scales, and, more generally, 3) determining why similarly forced models produce a range of responses.
The snippet from the press release doesn't identify the model(s) used; it doesn't even specify a model associated with the Fifth CMIP. So even if one were do "dig around" as you suggest, he would still have no idea what model(s) were used to generate their projections. Now when you get around to wrapping your head around that, then you can turn in your ignorance to overlooking the admission on the CMIP website that (1) the models they consider produce significantly different projections and (2) the feedbacks are "poorly understood".
Have a nice day.
Is it a supposition on your part that there's any code there to verify, do you think?