Security: Wireless Worms Will Follow Influenza's Example

Wireless Worms Will Follow Influenza's Example
New Scientist (02/26/08) Knight, Will
The outbreak of a wireless computer worm that spreads among portable devices like a flu epidemic is a possibility, according to a new mathematical model developed by Imperial College London researcher Christopher Rhodes and BT researcher Maziar Nekovee. Their model considers a group of people carrying Bluetooth-enabled smartphones, each of which has a fixed range for linking to other phones in the crowd. Each member of the crowd moves in a straight line and at a fixed speed, giving a phone that is contaminated by a worm a fixed likelihood of infecting other devices while they are within range. Rhodes and Nekovee's work demonstrates that a wireless worm could most efficiently proliferate in a crowded environment and also jump between geographically scattered locations, just like a real virus. "Knowledge that person-to-person contact, or rather device-to-device contact, represents a major factor in how a Bluetooth worm spreads is definitely important," says Symantec Security Response researcher Eric Chien. He adds that the disablement of non-essential Bluetooth communications during an outbreak "reduces the contact occurrences and would be analogous to wearing a surgical mask in areas of potential infection."
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Security: Cryptanalysis of A5/1, attack against the GSM cell phone encryption

Cryptanalysis of A5/1
February 22, 2008, Bruce Schneier
There have been a lot of articles about the new attack against the GSM cell phone encryption algorithm, A5/1. In some ways, this isn't real news; we've seen A5/1 cryptanalysis papers as far back as ten years ago.

What's new about this attack is: 1) it's completely passive, 2) its total hardware cost is around $1,000, and 3) the total time to break the key is about 30 minutes. That's impressive.

The cryptanalysis of A5/1 demonstrates an important cryptographic maxim: attacks always get better; they never get worse. This is why we tend to abandon algorithms at the first sign of weakness; we know that with time, the weaknesses will be exploited more effectively to yield better and faster attacks.
Posted on February 22, 2008 at 06:31 AM