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Category Archives: Current Events
Quantum Crypto is Quantum Backdoored, But It’s Not a Problem
Nature reports that Quantum Cryptography has been completely broken in “Hackers blind quantum cryptographers.” Researcher Vadim Makarov of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology
constructed an attack on a quantum cryptography system that “gave 100% knowledge of the key, with zero disturbance to the system,” as Makarov put it.
There have been other attacks on quantum cryptography, but this is the first in which there is no indication that the key has been stolen. In those attacks, the operator of the system would see the transmission error rate go up, but in Makarov’s attack, the operator sees nothing. In short, they are completely, utterly defeated. The attacker gets everything with impunity.
As usual, the quantum crypto crowd doesn’t see that a 100% loss of key with no inkling of the loss is a problem. Makarov himself said to Nature, “If you want state-of-the-art security, quantum cryptography is still the best place to go.”
Perhaps the kicker is this in Nature’s article:
Ribordy [CEO of ID Quantique] and Zavriyev [Director of R&D at MagiQ] stress that the open versions of their systems that are sold to university researchers are not the same as those sold for security purposes, which contain extra layers of protection. For instance, the fully commercial versions of IDQ’s system also use classical cryptographic techniques as a safety net, says Ribordy.
Huh? We can trust commercial versions of quantum crypto because it uses classical crypto as a safety net? That’s saying that the quantum coolness is really just icing over a VPN. Isn’t it? Am I missing something?
Now it’s time for a rant. Quantum cryptography is really, really cool technology, but the whole point of it is, well, security, and if the state of the art is that the system is breakable, then the art is in a sorry state. It’s a state of being a research toy, not a real security system.
The whole point of quantum crypto is that it isn’t even really crypto. It’s communications that can’t be eavesdropped on. It’s a magical tour-de-force of science and technology. But if it can be silently thwarted, it’s no good. If there is no way that it can be tested to be good, it’s no good. Moreover, the latter is more important than anything else.
For quantum crypto to be viable and trusted, we have to have some way that we know that the boxes were designed and manufactured in such a way that we can be confident that there’s no silent quantum backdoor in the box, then it has no value. You might as well just get a VPN router from the usual suspects and be done with it. If you’re really paranoid, just lay down some glass fiber and put it in a conduit.
Quantum information science as a discipline needs to start taking security seriously. It can’t just brush off a break of this magnitude, and remain credible. Come on, at least admit this is serious and has to be reflected in the manufacturing and testing. Come up with countermeasures, something.
Some Chaotic Thoughts on Healthcare
Passage of this bill is too big for my little brain, and therefore I’ll share some small comments. I’m going to leave out the many anecdotes which orient me around stupid red tape conflicts in the US, how much better my health care was in Canada (and how some Canadian friends flew to the US for optional procedures), etc.
I am glad that some of the worst elements of the American health care system are getting reined in. I can think of few worse ways to accomplish that goal, and many better ones. People thinking as I do are why the system perpetuated in the form that it did.
I am pessimistic that the system proposed will achieve its broader goals. The Massachusetts model is cumbersome and ineffective. Optimistic ideas about how prices would fall in a regulated market did not come to pass. The likely next step is a government run health system with supplemental insurance available. I expect this will come to pass in 10-20 years. Medicare seems reasonably well run for an American government program.
The Republican failure to push a coherent and principled alternative will haunt them. Going into the next election cycles, 32 million people will have some idea that the Democrats gave them bread and circuses health care. David Frum describes it as a Waterloo. I’m hopeful but not optimistic that the Tea Bagger Party will follow in the tradition of the Know Nothings and just fade away. I used to be hopeful that the Libertarians would split from the Republicans, but they’ve failed to. I would not be surprised to see the Republican minority shrink in 2010 and 2012, and I think some (but not all) of the shrillness I hear is people who fear that outcome is now inevitable.
I do expect that removing the health care impediment to entrepreneurship will be very positive for smaller companies. I wish we’d apply that same thinking to health care, enable people to make choices for themselves, and let the government own the residual risks, as it does today. But no one offered a credible way to un-couple employment and insurance that would let people keep their doctors, short of nationalization.
Anyway, there’s my negative 8 cents on the bill.
Please keep comments civil.
Albion
Courtesy of the BBC.
Abdulmutallab/Flight 253 Airline Terror links
- Air Canada is canceling US flights because of security. (Thanks, @nselby!)
- The New York Times reports that “Britain Rejected Visa Renewal for Suspect.” NPR reported that the State Department may have raised some sort of flag, but I don’t have a link.
- ABC is reporting that two of the “al Qaeda Leaders Behind Northwest Flight 253 Terror Plot Were Released by U.S..”
- Spencer Acerkman talks about “al-Qaeda’s Desperate Bid For Relevance, The Failed Plane Attack & Afghanistan:” “First, al-Qaeda’s signatures are redundance and simultaneity. Think 9/11, Madrid, London: all used multiple operatives focused on multiple targets, acting in unison. That’s to ensure something blows up if and when something goes wrong.” (Hmmm, also think US Cole, but the article is worth reading.) Thanks to Jim Harper, who also mentions that-
- On January 13th, CATO will be holding a forum on “The Obama Administration’s Counterterrorism Policy at One Year.”
And for the prurient interest, the underwear, apparently still containing the explosives. It looks like they were cut off with scissors, implying that he was wearing them at the time. I wonder how much explosive energy a human thigh absorbs?
In conversation, a friend mentioned that the media whirlwind overwhelms the right response, which is to go on with our lives. Which is what I shall now do. Look! A burning goat!
Abdulmutallab/Flight 253 Airline Terror links
- The Economist “The latest on Northwest flight 253:” “the people who run America’s airport security apparatus appear to have gone insane” and “This is the absolute worst sort of security theatre: inconvenient, absurd, and, crucially, ineffective.”
- Business Travel Coalition, via Dave Farber and Esther Dyson, “Aviation Security After Detroit:” “It is welcome news that President Obama has ordered an airline industry security review so long as it is strategic in nature.”
- Stuart Baker, “Six Uncomfortable Answers” which seems to boil down to “identity-based security has failed, let’s not address the good reasons why, and build more of it.” Usually Stewart has been more insightful than this. But then he writes “I asked several questions about how good the screening was in Nigeria and at Schiphol. I now think that it barely matters how good a job those screeners did. Without a reason to treat Abdulmutallab differently from other passengers, the current level of screening wasn’t likely to find the explosives.” Actually, as he points out, no acceptable level of screening is likely to find the explosives.
- The New York Times points out that “Questions Arise on Why Terror Suspect Was Not Stopped :” “That meant no flags were raised when he used cash to buy a ticket to the United States and boarded a plane, checking no bags.” It used to be that that got you extra screening. Why did we stop?
- Gawker, “The Shady Mainstream Media Payday of Flight 253 Hero Jasper Schuringa”
- I lost the link, but someone else pointed out that the new, alleged TSA rules would have made it a crime to get up and stop Abdulmutallab when he tried to set off his bomb.
- This comment on the Flyertalk thread raises the interesting question: are terrorists planning to fail, expecting over-reaction by governments? Provocation would not be a new page in terror playbooks.
- Alleged text of SD 1544-09-06
- Every international traveller to the US is being asked to spend an extra hour on these measures. Cormac Herley’s “So Long, and No Thanks for the Externalities: the Rational Rejection of Security Advice by Users” is absolutely irrelevant, unless travel to the US falls. Again. Which, of course, makes the odds of each remaining traveller being a terrorist materially higher.
New Restrictions: No Using Electronic Devices for the Last Hour
Apparently, in the wake of thousands of deaths from idiots paying more attention to GPS, cell phones, GameBoys, iPods and other such electronic devices, TSA has announced a ban on all use of such devices for the last hour of your commute.
No, just kidding. Apparently, they may be imposing new secret restrictions on use of electronics during the last hour of flight.
How can we break the cycle of terrorist does something irksome, we all pay forever? Our current oversight isn’t restraining DHS or TSA.
In the Proudest Traditions of the Royal Navy
The Royal Fleet Auxiliary ship Wave Knight watched a yacht be hijacked for fear of harming its passengers.
All stand for a rousing round of “Ain’t gonna study war no more.”
Seattle: Pete Holmes for City Attorney
I don’t usually say a lot about local issues, but as readers know, I’m concerned about how arbitrary ID checking is seeping into our society.
It turns out my friend Eric Rachner is also concerned about this, and was excited when a Washington “Judge said showing ID to cops not required.” So when Eric was challenged by the police, in accordance with the law, he refused. He was charged with obstruction of justice by city attorney Tom Carr. Well, it turns out Eric didn’t roll over, and after much stress, charges were dropped. The city shouldn’t be putting people through such things after state judges have ruled. It’s a waste of city resources, and it subjects nice folks like Eric or you or me to the leviathan power of the state. Such power must be responsibly exercised, and Tom Carr has shown he can’t do that.
On that basis alone, Tom Carr should be voted out of office.
It’s just a sweetner that Pete Holmes, his challenger, seems to have his head screwed on straight, with priorities that include government accountability and transparency, smart sentencing, and not a new $250MM jail that we don’t need and can’t afford.
As if you needed any more, our sole remaining newspaper has endorsed Holmes.
So please, vote Pete Holmes for city attorney.
[Update: Thank you! Tom Carr has conceded the race. I don't think I can claim lots of credit, but I'm glad he's on the outs.]
Another Long Time Fugitive Arrested
Yesterday, Luis Armando Peña Soltren was arrested after forty years on run for hijacking a plane to Cuba.
Soltren “will finally face the American justice system that he has been evading for more than four decades,” said U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara.
I understand that Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese and David Lynch are already circulating a petition around Hollywood demanding Mr Soltren’s release.