Latest Essays
Page 78
What is Happening to the Internet?
Recent changes to the Internet are turning the network of the military-industrial complex into the most likely prospect for an all-encompassing electronic-mail system.
Business cards used to be simple: name, company, address, telephone number and maybe a logo. Then came facsimile numbers. Now something with an @ in it is appearing on more and more business cards. It’s an Internet address; you probably have one already, although you may not know it, and sometime during the next couple of years you will have to learn it.
With an estimated 25 million users, the Internet is by far the world’s largest electronic-mail network, and its reach is extending to more private and public mail systems every week.
“If [people are] serious about electronic mail, I can get to them via the Internet; if they’re not, I probably don’t have time to figure out how to reach them,” said Bob Halloran, network manager at AT&T Co.’s Universal Card Services in Jacksonville, Fla…
Sharing Secrets Among Friends
Whether you're protecting a nuclear missile or your new recipe for burger sauce, polynomial encryption can prevent people from stealing your secrets.
Let’s say you’ve invented a new, extra-gooey, extra-sweet, creme filling; or a burger sauce that is even more tasteless than before. This stuff is important; you have to keep the recipe secret. You can tell only your most trusted employees the exact mixture of ingredients, but what if one of them defects to the competition? Before, long every grease palace on the block would be making burgers as tasteless as yours. That just wouldn’t do.
You can take a message and divide it up into secure pieces. Each of the pieces by itself means nothing, but put them all together and the message appears. If each employee has a piece of the recipe, then only together can they make the sauce (employees could type their portion into a central sauce-making computer or something). If any employee jumps ship with a piece of the recipe, the portion is useless by itself…
Computer Security: Key Management Issue
MacWEEK Special Report: Emerging Technologies
Back when computers stood alone on desks, unconnected to the rest of the world, computer security was simply a matter of locking an office door, putting a lock on the power supply or installing a security software package. Today, the rules of computer security are changing, and in years to come, it’s going to be a whole new ball game.
What used to be the concern solely of the military is required by more and more companies. “Between LANs, file servers and dial-up connections, it’s hard to regulate who has access to what,” said Steven Bass, principal software engineer at Codex Corp., a division of Motorola Inc. in Canton, Mass…
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.