Thursday 28 November 2013

Internet architects propose encrypting all the world’s Web traffic

Internet architects propose encrypting all the world’s Web traffic | Ars Technica: "A vastly larger percentage of the world's Web traffic will be encrypted under a near-final recommendation to revise the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) that serves as the foundation for all communications between websites and end users.
The proposal, announced in a letter published Wednesday by an official with the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), comes after documents leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden heightened concerns about government surveillance of Internet communications. Despite those concerns, websites operated by Yahoo, the federal government, the site running this article, and others continue to publish the majority of their pages in a "plaintext" format that can be read by government spies or anyone else who has access to the network the traffic passes over. Last week, cryptographer and security expert Bruce Schneier urged people to "make surveillance expensive again" by encrypting as much Internet data as possible." 'via Blog this'

Keeping Secrets: Pierre Omidyar, Glenn Greenwald and the privatization of Snowden’s leaks

Keeping Secrets: Pierre Omidyar, Glenn Greenwald and the privatization of Snowden’s leaks | PandoDaily: "It’s especially worth asking since it became clear that Greenwald and Poitras are now the only two people with full access to the complete cache of NSA files, which are said to number anywhere from 50,000 to as many as 200,000 files. That’s right: Snowden doesn’t have the files any more, the Guardian doesn’t have them, the Washington Post doesn’t have them… just Glenn and Laura at the for-profit journalism company created by the founder of eBay.
Edward Snowden has popularly been compared to major whistleblowers such as Daniel Ellsberg, Chelsea Manning and Jeffrey Wigand. However, there is an important difference in the Snowden files that has so far gone largely unnoticed. Whistleblowing has traditionally served the public interest. In this case, it is about to serve the interests of a billionaire starting a for-profit media business venture. This is truly unprecedented. Never before has such a vast trove of public secrets been sold wholesale to a single billionaire as the foundation of a for-profit company." 'via Blog this'

Tuesday 5 November 2013

CyberTelecom Blog: [NIST] Initiating Review of Cryptographic Standards Development Process

CyberTelecom Blog: [NIST] Initiating Review of Cryptographic Standards Development Process: "To ensure that our guidance has been developed according the highest standard of inclusiveness, transparency and security, NIST has initiated a formal review of our standards development efforts. We are compiling our goals and objectives, principles of operation, processes for identifying cryptographic algorithms for standardization, methods for reviewing and resolving public comments, and other important procedures necessary for a rigorous process." 'via Blog this'

Google's terms and conditions are less readable than Beowulf

Google's terms and conditions are less readable than Beowulf: "Richard Mortier, a lecturer in computer science at Nottingham, ran Google’s latest revision through the plug in and found it to have a SMOG score of 15.48. That means users need a GCSE-level reading age to understand it. According to Literatin, 43% of the adult English population would not be able to read the terms.
Texts with a SMOG value in this range require a reading age of between 15-18 if they are to be understood, so anyone hoping to wade through Google’s terms of service and make it out the other side would need to go in equipped with a pretty decent education.
In comparison, the epic Old English poem Beowulf has a SMOG score of 13.9" 'via Blog this'