Archive for September, 2004

For paranoiac - Fractionate your information stream

Published September 30th, 2004 in Security. 0 Comments Print This Post Print This Post


For paranoiac
Fractionate your information stream

Everybody will tell you that it’s good practice to change your password periodically. It’s definitely true. Any computer user must do it. Here I’ll say a thing that must be done by paranoiac.

Take a stream of information that you create over year. Take note that the stream isn’t continuous but partitioned like a stream of email messages sent over time. If you encrypt the stream with a public-key encryption algorithm; you’ll be able to aggregate many message from different sources. The thing is that if you don’t change you public/private keys, anybody who discovers your private key will be able to access your entire stream over time if he logged it. This is a real problem if such a thing append. It’s why the concept of information partitioning is important. You only need to change you keys each n day and if your attacker find your current private key he’ll not have access to the whole stream of information. It’s a way to add security within the security provided by the cryptosystem.

As I said, it’s for paranoiac only. It’s just a little thought that come up in my mind today, enjoy it.

Nuclear in the news today

Published September 28th, 2004 in Security. 2 Comments Print This Post Print This Post


Nuclear in the news today

There are two interesting piece of news concerning nuclear security. The first one is from the BBC. The Kyrgyz authorities had arrested 2 men that tried to sell 60 small containers containing plutonium-239. Who said that terrorists or other criminal groups don’t have the power to find and buy such material? This is possible that the news isn’t true. This is possible that the Kyrgyz government to prove something to the Russian or American government invented this. However, personally I think that such a situation is possible. Think about it 2 seconds. The CIA probably doesn’t have many agents in the central Asia zone since 1980 or 1990. The US army have a base in Uzbekistan but they are confined here. We need to rely on local governments for such investigation and probably the world security. The problem is that they have their own problems. Is that possible the Kyrgyz government had arrested them? If it’s true, praise them. Is that the first time that criminals try to buy/sell such products on the black market? I doubt. Why a country where 80% of their weddings are done with kidnapped women care about some criminals that sell/buy plutonium on their territories? The possibility exists; but I have doubts. What’s freaky is that we rely on such governments(there governments in central Asia) to do the work that concerns us. We need to change our mentality and put back our agents on the field where the things append. When I say “we”, I talk about the countries that care about their homeland security or countries that need to care about it.

[In addition to the post: 02 October 2004]
———————————————–

It was finally a false alarm. It suppose to be in reality 55 old-fashioned Soviet smoke detectors. I warn you in the first edition of the post that this was possible that this piece of news was not real or true. However most of the facts remind I said on the subject remain.

———————————————–

The other piece of news is from SecurityFocus. They talk about cyber attacks against nuclear facilities. There are some interesting things that they said and that I want to think about:The fact: “Last year the Slammer worm penetrated a private computer network at Ohio’s idled Davis-Besse nuclear plant and disabled a safety monitoring system for nearly five hours. The worm entered the plant network through an interconnected contractor’s network, bypassing Davis-Besse’s firewall”. The solution they found to resolve the problem: “News of the Davis-Besse incident prompted Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) last fall to call for U.S. regulators to establish cyber security requirements for the 103 nuclear reactors operating in the U.S., specifically requiring firewalls and up-to-date patching of security vulnerabilities”. It’s sure that they have problems with their firewalls and vulnerability updates. But for the specific case of what append at Davis-Besse, the best firewall and latest updates would not stop the virus. Why? Because he propagated himself through the contractor’s network. The point here is to demand the same level of network security to their contractors. Any security system with a backdoor is not secure at all.

What if the contractor is bribed or menaced by a criminal group? Security is not just about firewalls and security updates. It’s more than that. You need to think about things that you don’t think about. It’s not just a process; it’s a way of thinking. It’s like doing a great discovery. You need a mind shift, imagination. You need to understand how your enemies work and think. You need to understand how your employees work, think and react in certain situation. Personally I see a great deal of psychology in security (any type of security), I’m I paranoiac? Security is not distributed in distinct parts, it’s a whole.

There is a hope when you finish to read the article:

“A working draft of the NRC guide reviewed by SecurityFocus would encourage plant operators to consider the effect of each new safety system on the plant’s cyber security, and to develop response plans to deal with computer incidents. Additionally, it would urge vendors to maintain a secure development environment, and to probe their products for backdoors and logic bombs before shipping.”

But as I said, this is not just a question backdoors and logic bombs in software. However they are in the good way because we can see that they are preoccupied by their sofware development companies and their interaction with them.

There is not any link between these two piece of news. But I think that it’s a good opportunity to think about the problem. There are probably many things that I don’t understand in the situation, but if I base my thoughts on what I perceive, there is a real problem for the world security.

Some thoughts and highlights on the Global Information Security Survey 2004 of Ernst&Young

Published September 26th, 2004 in Security. 0 Comments Print This Post Print This Post


Some thoughts and highlights on the Global Information Security Survey 2004 of Ernst&Young

There are some of my thoughts and highlights that I wish to share with you about the Global Information Security Survey 2004 of Ernst&Young.

First, there is the targeted population: more than 1230 enterprises in 51 countries. 22% of them have more than 1 billion in revenues and 56% of them more than 100 millions.

One of the things that I need to point you out in this survey is what I already observed and I posted on this blog since 3 weeks. This thing is the management-based approached of security. It’s the importance of the employees as a security layer in the infrastructure of the system. Unfortunately, senior management is more trusting than prudent. This situation seems to be the root of many problems.

As many people think, one of the best security layer that enterprises can have is his employees. Ironically, this same layer can also be the weakest link. The problem is that they need to be trained and educated in there role in the infrastructure as a security layer. If you do so, you’ll have one of your strongest link; otherwise, there is a good probability that this layer would be your weakest.

The main influence factor in the security of an enterprise is the senior management. It’s their decisions that will affect the security of their enterprise. If they don’t care, who will? This is the problem that I pointed many times before on this blog. First, we need to educate our top-level administrators and managers. After we’ll be ready to educate employees of other levels. However, the idea is not viable if senior managers are not aware of the situation.

The easiest and less expensive attack that we can perform to enter a system is by exploiting the human factor. An attacker only needs one negligent employee to attack the whole system and take into it. By knowing that, it’s now ease to understand why it’s so important to educate every employee of an enterprise, from the concierge to the Board of Director.

After this said; we can get a look at numbers.

Interesting numbers are them related with the human dimension of the security. You can see them at pages 13 and 14. Only 53% of the respondents train their employees in a security and awareness program. Don’t forget, it’s an important factor in the success of a security infrastructure. Only 56% train there employees to identify and report suspicious activities. Finally, 60% provide instruction to there employees to classify data. The problem with the former is that the biggest asset an enterprise tries to secure is their data.

Companies correctly identified insiders as the second highest rated threat. The problem is that they don’t do many things to cope with this reality as we can see in the results up there. As said in the survey:

“Employee misconduct involving information systems”
cited as a distant second behind “major virus, Trojan
horse or Internet worms,” the top threat to organizations
– Less than 30 percent listed “raising employee information
security training/awareness” as a top initiative in 2004

As you know, security is a process. This means that you need to periodically upgrade and change the security policies to cope with his changing environment. The problem is that 39% of the enterprises of the survey fail to periodically review their security policies for compliance. Moreover, close to 70 percent[15% monthly, 16% quarterly, 8% semi-annually, 10% annually, 39% ad hoc, 11% never] of the respondents’ board of directors failed to receive a quarterly report about the organization’s information security status.

According to Ernst&Young, top obstacles to effective information security in 2004 are Lack of security awareness by users, Budget constraints or limitations, Availability of skilled staff, Difficulty proving the value of information security and Pace of information technology change. The three firsts can be overcome by education. The first by the education of the employees of the enterprise. The second by the education of the senior managers and the third by talking with the universities and other educational institutions to help them bringing programs that cope with the needs of the private industries. Three obstacles; one solution: education.

99% of the respondents have antivirus software and respondents said that with an occurrence of 68% major virus, trojan horse, or internet worms was the result of an unexpected or unscheduled outage of their critical business systems in 2003. Why? Because of the insiders. They see an attachment in an email, the click on it. Another possibility can be the lack of system upgrade. Think about Codered or other major virus.

Another interesting numbers are the ones that talk about outsourcings. 28% of the respondents outsource information technology operation(s) to foreign-based solution providers. Take note that the percentage grows to 46% with companies with revenues over 1 billion. The problem is that only 20% of the respondents conduct a regular assessment of their IT outsourcer’s compliance with the host organization’s own information security regulatory requirements. Moreover, only 30% of the respondents conduct a regular assessment of their IT outsourcer’s compliance with the host organization’s own information security policies. This is unbelievable but this is true. Companies have some type of security policies, but they don’t necessary demand the same level of security for their foreign-based solution providers. I have some thoughts related with the security in outsourcing that I’ll write about in a future post. As said in the survey:

– 80 percent failed to conduct a regular assessment of
their IT outsourcer’s compliance with the host
organization’s information security regulatory requirements
– 70 percent failed to conduct a regular assessment of their
IT outsourcer’s compliance with the host organization’s
information security policie.

I encourage you to read the whole survey. It’s a really interesting reading and it succeed to cope the whole thing. Moreover the analysis done by Ernst&Young is short, accurate and readable without being boring. So, go on and enjoy the reading.

Social responsibilities toward violence

Published September 23rd, 2004 in Security. 0 Comments Print This Post Print This Post


Social responsibilities toward violence

This is just a little thought about a piece of news that appeared on the BBC this week. This post is hard to write because anybody can read it, from anywhere on the planet, from any culture. The perception toward the violence depends greatly from a place to another, from a culture to another, from a social layer to another. I just want to warn you that it’s strictly a personal thought that don’t need to be shared; so read it with your eyes and if you not agree with it, then start a discussion and I’ll be happy to try to understand your point of view. Don’t be shy, I’m really open with others’ thoughts, it’s how I learn and it’s how I can adapt myself and survive in a new environment and situation.

So, have you read this article? This is just a story like many others. It’s in China but you can see the same thing anywhere else in the world. It’s not a question of race or religion, it’s a question of violence. It’s a question of people toward violence, pure violence. They had probably a motivation to do it, possibly none. The fact is not there. The question I need to ask is: Is everybody having a social responsibility toward violence? A couple of bums versus 80 other peoples. Two of them done a blood bath. Nobody reacted to the situation. They have knifes? Clients had chairs, keyboards, probably some type of poles, etc. There were security guards. Nobody moved. It’s sure that no one know how they will react in this type of situations before live it. Think about it. You, what would you have done in this situation?

Can we check other citizens been slashed in our face without reacting? Do we have the duty to try to do our best in these situations (and not just bow our head)? I think it’s a good society question. We need our society as secure as possible. They are not, they’ll never be. The thing is not to live in a completely secure world. The thing is to be aware of the problem, to study it and try to understand it. The real problem is that people play the ostrich and hide there head in the sand. They don’t wish to sea the reality. Personally, here in Canada, it’s how it work. People don’t need to get stock in the story of others people. Personally, I think we are wrong to think in this way. I think that we need to help other citizens if they are in danger. We need to help them at our best and not fear the prosecution. I also think that we need to learn this thought to citizens and to our future generations. Really, I’m dreaming, I don’t think that a majority of Canadians agree with me but it’s my point of view for the moment. What lack in Canada and probably in many other countries? The citizenship spirit.

If I wish to have the sense of security in my community, I think that this same community needs to have a citizenship spirit , be able and have the courage to help me if I’m in troubles. I’ll do it for them, but will they’ll do it for me?

You need a foundation before rising your house.

Published September 21st, 2004 in Security. 0 Comments Print This Post Print This Post


You need a foundation before rising your house.
Avoid complexity when you talk of security, back to basis

I just get around a really interesting piece of news that talk about the last IT Security Summit conference of the Gartner research center. Normally peoples that talk in these shows talk about what you need in your enterprise to upgrade your security. Normally they talk about the last technology that you need to be up-to-date and a foot ahead of hackers. Victor Wheatman, vice president and research area director at Gartner said the opposite. His speech was about what enterprise don’t need in the field of computer security technology. He says that they need to go back to basis if they really care about their security infrastructure.

Wheatman also singled out “500-page security policies” and security awareness posters as things an IT manager would be better off not spending company resources on. “You do need security policies, but not ones so large that no one reads them. It is also important to have a business continuity plan. We got a lot of calls when the hurricanes came through Florida, but for the most part, that was a little too late.”

It’s the same as for physical security. If you are not the president of the United-States, you don’t need 10 bodyguards, an aerial surveillance and 15 hidden snipers when you walk on the street. You only need some awareness basic principles. A basic procedure like the code color of Jeff Cooper. More complex the procedure is, less people will follow it. It’s the same principles as them in self-defence. You’ll not use your kung-fu style if you are assaulted in a bar. You’ll use your gross skills that don’t need any reflection to use. You’ll not look at every person and think about all possible scenarios when you walk on the street. You unconsciously check for hints that can lead to a possible threat. It’s the same thing with a computer security policy; you need it as simple as possible for all of your employees. If you protocol is not simple and straight to the goal, your employees will not follow it. You can do one more elaborated for your system administrator, but not for your normal employees, this is not there job and they are a big part of your security infrastructure, take care of them! This fact is a question of human nature.

Another interesting thing that I noted in this article is this discussion:

Perhaps most importantly, an IT manager needs to demonstrate to the executives within the company how to take better advantage of the systems it already has through the use of security.

“We have an appalling absence of basic management metrics for our trade. If you can measure a problem accurately, you have the Holy Grail,” Smith said. “But what you also must have is a champion at the board level. Without senior-level support, nothing will ever happen and you are doomed.”

I already discussed of this in this article some weeks ago. It just connects my thoughts with this fact.

Review: The Myth of Homeland Security

Published September 18th, 2004 in Security. 0 Comments Print This Post Print This Post


Review: The Myth of Homeland Security

I just finished to read The myth of Homeland Security. This is a good book about homeland security; mostly concentrated on United-States homeland security post 9/11. This is an apolitical essay on the subject. He bases his thoughts mostly on the analysis of the PATRIOT acts and other governmental writings. A thing that I really don’t like is that he didn’t do a bibliography; he justified this by:

“I had to write whole sections of this book based on partial information. But this book is not intended to be a history text or a reference. I’m making some inflammatory observations; I don’t want you, the reader, to ignore the substance of what I have to say by getting bogged down in the details of my research. So I didn’t quo sources.”

This is a good introduction book on the subject of homeland security. He ask the general questions of the subject and explain his point of view on them. I think that this is an honest writing from the part of the author. Some times, he lacks some deepening of his subject but this is excusable.

There is a good quote that resumes the general mood of the book: “Last week a friend forwarded me one of those “quotable quotes” emails that circle endlessly on the internet. At the bottom, it read: “You read about all these terrorists – most of them came here legally, but they hung around on these expired visas, some for as long as 10 to 15 years. Now, compare that to Blockbuster; you are two days late with a video and those people are all over you. Let’s put Blockbuster in charge of immigration”.

By moment I had doubts on his researches for this book. For example, at the page 111 he says in a You should know section: “The National Security Agency (NSA) is a completely separate “turf” that focuses on cryptography, communication security, and signals intelligence.” The problem is that if you read “Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency from the Cold War Through the Dawn of a New Century” you’ll see that the fall of CIA was mainly caused by the NSA who win the bureaucratic game for founds. The FBI probably not helped but to say that the NSA is completely separate turf this is two worlds. It’s possible that he is right, but I put a bémol here.

There is his home page: Marcus J. Ranum

This is my personal little review of the book, but you can have access to a full and complete review of the book by reading Robert M. Slade’s

Have a good read!

A9.com search engine - The consequences on your privacy

Published September 17th, 2004 in Security. 0 Comments Print This Post Print This Post


A9.com search engine
The consequences on your privacy

I just found a piece of news on Future Now blog that caught my attention. This talk about the new start-up of Amazon.com. This is a new kind a search engine. Basically it’s a sort of wrapper on other search engine, like google, with cool new features. You can get more information about the service here. Personally, I find these features really cool and interesting. You can use your Amazon account to log in at A9.com without any problem. Wow, thank Amazon for such cool things!

After a couple of minutes, I thought about it and I find that this cannot be done by magic. I remembered all books that Amazon proposed me when I logged in with my personal account, they were most of the time really interesting. Then I thought that this would probably be the same thing with the A9 search engine. There is the result of my little research, some tips and comments for your privacy about this search engine of a new kind. Personally I’m a big customer at Amazon, I buy approximately 30 to 40 books by years on there website. However, I’ll not use the A9 search engine because I don’t want that Amazon know not only my customer habits of reading but also all other subjects that I search for on the internet. I can deal with the fact that Amazon.com uses my customer habits to propose me interesting new books. I can deal with this because this can point me out some books that I never think of before. However, I don’t want that they propose me many others things. I need to control the pub that popup in my view. It’s what I do by doing the choice of not using this new search engine.

First, you need to know that they collect four type of information: [Source]

• Information You Give Us: We receive and store any information you enter on our Web site or give us in any other way. You can choose not to provide certain information, but then you might not be able to take advantage of many of our features. We use the information that you provide for such purposes as customizing the site for you, improving the site, responding to your requests, and communicating with you.
• Automatic Information: We receive and store certain types of information whenever you interact with us. For example, like many Web sites, we use cookies, and we obtain certain types of information when your Web browser accesses A9.com. If you would prefer not to be recognized on our site, we recommend that you use our alternate service located at generic.A9.com. On generic.A9.com, we will not recognize your A9.com or Amazon.com cookie. Information we gather on generic.A9.com will not be used in our data analysis (other than to detect abuse) and will not be used to personalize the services we offer you.
• E-mail Communications: To help us make e-mails more useful and interesting, we often receive a confirmation when you open e-mail from A9.com if your computer supports such capabilities.
• Information from Other Sources: For reasons such as improving personalization of our service, we might receive information about you from other sources and add it to our information.

What can be freaky are the definitions of “Information You Give Us” and “Automatic Information”:

• Information You Give Us: You provide most such information when you use A9.com to search or otherwise communicate with us. For example, you provide information when you enter search terms; set bookmarks; download and use our toolbar; communicate with us by phone, e-mail, or otherwise; and employ our other services. As a result of those actions, you might supply us with personally identifiable information or information about things that interest you.
• Automatic Information: Examples of the information we collect and analyze include the Internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the Internet; computer and connection information such as browser type and version, operating system, and platform; the full Uniform Resource Locators (URL) clickstream to, through, and from our Web site, including date and time; cookie number; and pages you viewed or searched for.

As you can read, they store many information about you and your search habits. It can be freaky. This information is gold. They have your entire profile. The have your name, your address, you postal code, your buying habits and your searching habits. If this information is not gold, what is it then?
Another thing is that this information can be accessible not just by Amazon but also by some type of police because “[they] release account and other personal information when [they] believe release is appropriate to comply with the law”.
You can always use the generic.A9.com server. They are not collecting any information on you. The only problem is that you don’t have access to the cool features. Instead, use Google; it’ll be more productive I think.
You can use the service if you can deal with the possible risks. The only thing that I’ll tell you is: be aware of your privacy on the internet. This is just an example among many others.

Weblogs as knowledge management tool.

Published September 17th, 2004 in Other. 0 Comments Print This Post Print This Post


Weblogs as knowledge management tool.

I send this post because today I find this really interesting article about blogging. It first describes the knowledge: what is it, how it’s done, the process of knowledge, etc. After, the author lists some tools for knowledge management like email and weblog. It describes the utility of weblog for personal purpose and how weblog is a useful tool for knowledge management.

I think this is an important article because we need to understand how this new type of web publishing can be used in our life and for our constant quest of knowledge search.

Finally, by reading this article you’ll know how I see this weblog. You can read it as a howto to read my blog. I also had some other motivations to write here; like try to increase my English writing ;)

PS: The author emphasis on the fact that people can post there comments to enhance the blogger’s thought. It’s why I tell you to leave your comments on my posts =)

What is important? The attitude!

Published September 17th, 2004 in Arts. 0 Comments Print This Post Print This Post


What is important? The attitude!

The university as restarted. The northern life in Canada is also restarted. Everybody is going back to there normal activities after summer. People are coming back at the Thai boxe courses. Half-new, half-old, the normal schedule is restarting.

In a year, you see many people coming to try the sport. Some like, some don’t. However, what’s really interesting is to talk to them. This week a new special girl (lawyer of the law of woman (“droit de la femme” in French, I try a literal translation here)) has come to try. She comes 2 times and every time she said to anybody, “What’s important is The Attitude”. Why she was saying this to everybody? I think it’s because she just restarted training and that she had a lack of cardio and what was important at this moment for her was The Attitude.

I just think about it. Why now? Dunno. The thing that I know is that she was right. She was right to say that what is important is The Attitude. The Attitude is at every level. If you want performance and results, you need attitude. In training? You need attitude. In fighting? You need attitude. You had bad news? You need attitude. Finally, she was right. What’s important is The Attitude.

Security consequences of possible proof of Riemann’s hypothesis

Published September 12th, 2004 in Security. 0 Comments Print This Post Print This Post

Security consequences of possible proof of Riemann’s hypothesis


Security consequences of possible proof of Riemann’s hypothesis

I’ll not resume the news here, it’s was widely done these days: [4], [5], [6], [7], [8] and [9]. There is the proof of the theorem [2] of Louis de Branges [3]

The problem is that we don’t know if his proof is right. Mathematicians have doubt if Louis de Branges is able to prove the hypothesis. It’ll take time to peer review the proof by the most important mathematicians of Riemann’s hypothesis. If finally the proof is counter verified and became true, it’ll probably take time to know the consequences of the proof and how to use it.

In the case that he is right and that we can find how to use the hypothesis to make many one-way functions with prime numbers not one-way anymore, what will be the consequences? For now, no one; in the future, probably many with asymmetric encryption algorithms. If the dream to prove this hypothesis comes true, you’ll can forget electronic commerce, certification, digital signatures, TCP/IP security, secure telephones, just to tell some. You’ll not be able to rely on public-key encryption anymore as a easy to use method for encrypted distant transmission. We’ll live a boom of “The new most secure ecommerce solution with our new full proof proprietary public-key encryption algorithm”. Think about it, it took thousands years and many brilliant ideas to be where we are now. Don’t think that it will take 2 weeks or 2 months to make a new leap in the field of public-key encryption. When we’ll find a solution, it’ll need months and years to analyse and harden algorithms.

There are some questions like: Why there is not enthusiasm for the discovery? Why the proof is not yet published for peer reviewing? Is this because other mathematicians of the field don’t want it confirmed? Is this because there is a price of 1 million in US dollars on the proof of this hypothesis? Is this because they get pressure by commerce and governmental agencies? There is too many questions, we’ll probably know the answer to these questions in a near or far future.

There are some of my reactions and toughs about what come up in the news:

From [4] it’s written: “Gartner research director Ray Wagner said recent flaws in encryption methodologies would take years of research to develop and exploit for, something hackers are less likely to do while other security flaws are easier to take advantage of.” Yeah sure but is there just hackers in the networked world? What about government? Industrial spies? Well funded terrorist groups? (Don’t forget, terrorists aren’t stupid, many have university studies being there necktie. This isn’t an argument to not take the possibility in count.
Always in [4] : “”This is one area where we can stay ahead of the thieves,” said Alan Canton, president of security consulting and software firm Adams-Blake Company. “It does not take nearly as long to come up with a new code or encryption methodology as it does to crack it.” Hummm, I think that Mr Canton needs to read The Code Book. Does he know how it took time to arrive where we are? Yeah, for the moment cryptographers are ahead of cryptanalysts. For how many time if the hypothesis is proved true? Refer to history Mr Canton, it can teach us many things sometimes, specially in the filed of cryptography.
Mr Canton also said: “”No matter what happens,” he added, “it will always be safer to enter your credit card in an e-commerce transaction than to give it to the waiter at the restaurant or to a mail-order company via phone.”” He is right, but I don’t think that he got the point. This is not only a problem of credit card number that travel plain text over the internet, but for the rest, for private communication over a cell phone, to keep our state secret safe of the view of other countries when they communicate. Really, plain text credit card number over the internet is probably on of my last worries. Why? Because the worse thing that can append if someone get my credit card number and buy something with it is that I’ll need to pay 50$CAN for my reclamation to Visa or MasterCard… what a deal!
Just another thing that I wish to point out: check the curriculum of this so-called president of security consulting and software firm. Check his publications, etc. Personally, I cannot find out where you can find his realisations as a security consultant. Therefore, you get his words for what it is. I just say this to remember you that it’s always interesting when you do research on what is said in an article. Be critic!

Come back with our sheep. What’s interesting with this piece of news is that if he is right, we’ll have work for the next years. If he is not then it remembers us that the possibility exists and that we need to get an eye on the situation. It’s not because his proof is wrong that his idea is.

It’s a privilege to have this piece of news. It’s essential to think about news like this. Is the proof of Louis de Branges true? Personally, I don’t care. I know that the possibility exist, it’s what I care of. It’s like UFO, do they come on earth with there flying saucers? For now, I don’t really care, but I know that the possibility exist and this is what make it really interesting. The possibility! Can international terrorism can shutdown our telephone systems by hacking them? The possibility exists. Will they be able to do it? If so, will they do it? It’s another question. What I know it’s that the possibility exist and that we need to take this in count when telephone corporations will build security policies and extend there networks, and try to build security systems. It’s what we care of.

There are the links to Louis de Branges’s website and proof.
[1]http://www.math.purdue.edu/~branges/
[2]http://www.math.purdue.edu/ftp_pub/branges/apology.pdf

There is an interesting article by Karl Sabbagh on the character of Louis de Branges:
[3]http://www.lrb.co.uk/v26/n14/sabb01_.html

There is the proof in the news:
[4]http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/Mathematical-Solution-Might-Undermine-Data-Encryption-36427.html
[5]http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3794813.stm
[6]http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/science/story/0,12996,1298812,00.html
[7]http://www.vnunet.com/news/1157891
[8]http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,10706836%255E30417,00.html
[9]http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/846888.cms
[10]http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/blog/archives/000035.html






This blog is a regularly updated collection of my thoughts, tips, tricks and ideas about my semantic Web researches.


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