Tag: security
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Another letter from Ivo
Dutch minister of Justice Ivo Opstelten is certainly being a busy boy. Just a few days have passed since his last letter and now he has written another one, equally worrying or perhaps more so. In short, he is suggesting in an as yet not public letter that the Dutch police should have the right…
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“Hand over those decryption keys…or else”
Another day, another worrying proposal from the Dutch government. As we await the formation of a new cabinet, Dutch minister of Security and Justice, Ivo Opstelten is seeking to change Dutch law to make it mandatory for suspects of certain crimes to hand over their decryption keys so that law enforcement officers can have access…
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Convergence, an alternative to Certificate Authorities
In the aftermath of the Diginotar hack, I wrote an article that mentioned we needed a silver bullet to solve the problems with the current state of SSL and certificate authorities. Of course the Internet wouldn’t be the Internet if such a silver bullet didn’t emerge sooner or later. Famous hacker Moxie Marlinspike has announced…
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The dangers of eroding privacy
The dangers of eroding privacy We are living in an age where information is fast becoming the most important commodity. This has created a new class of poor people. Apart from the ‘have-nots’ we now also have the ‘know-nots’, people who are not privy to certain types of information. Because information is so valuable, lots…
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Impact of the Diginotar hack
In June 2011 Diginotar, a Dutch provider of SSL certificates, was hacked. The hack was probably carried out by hackers working for the government of the sovereign nation of Iran for the purpose of obtaining forged SSL certificates for a number of high level domains, such as Google and Yahoo, among others. With the help…
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The ssh files (2)
Welcome to the second instalment of the ssh files. In this instalment, we’ll be taking a look at logging in without a password, using public key authentication. The major benefit of logging in through public key authentication, is that you will only have to remember the pass phrase of your key and no longer a…