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Security Through Obscurity
Security through obscurity (or security by obscurity) is the reliance in security engineering on design or implementation secrecy as the main method of providing security to a system or component. History An early opponent of security through obscurity was the locksmith Alfred Charles Hobbs, who in 1851 demonstrated to the public how state-of-the-art locks could be picked. In response to concerns that exposing security flaws in the design of locks could make them more vulnerable to criminals, he said: "Rogues are very keen in their profession, and know already much more than we can teach them." There is scant formal literature on the issue of security through obscurity. Books on security engineering cite Kerckhoffs' doctrine from 1883, if they cite anything at all. For example, in a discussion about secrecy and openness in Nuclear Command and Control: e benefits of reducing the likelihood of an accidental war were considered to outweigh the possible benefits of secrecy. This ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Security Engineering
Security engineering is the process of incorporating security controls into an information system so that the controls become an integral part of the system’s operational capabilities. It is similar to other systems engineering activities in that its primary motivation is to support the delivery of engineering solutions that satisfy pre-defined functional and user requirements, but it has the added dimension of preventing misuse and malicious behavior. Those constraints and restrictions are often asserted as a security policy. In one form or another, security engineering has existed as an informal field of study for several centuries. For example, the fields of locksmithing and security printing have been around for many years. The concerns for modern security engineering and computer systems were first solidified in a RAND paper from 1967, "Security and Privacy in Computer Systems" by Willis H. Ware. This paper, later expanded in 1979, provided many of the fundamental inform ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Operations Security
Operations security (OPSEC) is a process that identifies critical information to determine if friendly actions can be observed by enemy intelligence, determines if information obtained by adversaries could be interpreted to be useful to them, and then executes selected measures that eliminate or reduce adversary exploitation of friendly critical information. In a more general sense, OPSEC is the process of protecting individual pieces of data that could be grouped together to give the bigger picture (called aggregation). OPSEC is the protection of critical information deemed mission-essential from military commanders, senior leaders, management or other decision-making bodies. The process results in the development of countermeasures, which include technical and non-technical measures such as the use of email encryption software, taking precautions against eavesdropping, paying close attention to a picture you have taken (such as items in the background), or not talking openly ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bruce Schneier
Bruce Schneier (; born January 15, 1963) is an American cryptographer, computer security professional, privacy specialist, and writer. Schneier is a Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and a Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society as of November, 2013. He is a board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Access Now, and The Tor Project; and an advisory board member of Electronic Privacy Information Center and VerifiedVoting.org. He is the author of several books on general security topics, computer security and cryptography and is a squid enthusiast. In 2015, Schneier received the EPIC Lifetime Achievement Award from Electronic Privacy Information Center. Early life Bruce Schneier is the son of Martin Schneier, a Brooklyn Supreme Court judge. He grew up in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, attending P.S. 139 and Hunter College High School. After receiving a physics bachelor's degree from the University of Rocheste ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Obfuscation
Obfuscation is the obscuring of the intended meaning of communication by making the message difficult to understand, usually with confusing and ambiguous language. The obfuscation might be either unintentional or intentional (although intent usually is connoted), and is accomplished with circumlocution (talking around the subject), the use of jargon (technical language of a profession), and the use of an argot ( ingroup language) of limited communicative value to outsiders. In expository writing, unintentional obfuscation usually occurs in draft documents, at the beginning of composition; such obfuscation is illuminated with critical thinking and editorial revision, either by the writer or by an editor. Etymologically, the word ''obfuscation'' derives from the Latin , from ''obfuscāre'' (to darken); synonyms include the words beclouding and abstrusity. Medical Doctors are faulted for using jargon to conceal unpleasant facts from a patient; the American author and ph ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zero-day (computing)
A zero-day (also known as a 0-day) is a computer-software vulnerability previously unknown to those who should be interested in its mitigation, like the vendor of the target software. Until the vulnerability is mitigated, hackers can exploit it to adversely affect programs, data, additional computers or a network. An exploit taking advantage of a zero-day is called a zero-day exploit, or zero-day attack. The term "zero-day" originally referred to the number of days since a new piece of software was released to the public, so "zero-day software" was obtained by hacking into a developer's computer before release. Eventually the term was applied to the vulnerabilities that allowed this hacking, and to the number of days that the vendor has had to fix them. Once the vendors learn of the vulnerability, they will usually create patches or advise workarounds to mitigate it. The more recently that the vendor has become aware of the vulnerability, the more likely it is that no fix or m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
AACS Encryption Key Controversy
A controversy surrounding the AACS cryptographic key arose in April 2007 when the Motion Picture Association of America and the Advanced Access Content System Licensing Administrator, LLC (AACS LA) began issuing cease and desist letters to websites publishing a 128-bit (16-byte) number, represented in hexadecimal as 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 (commonly referred to as 09 F9), a cryptographic key for HD DVDs and Blu-ray Discs. The letters demanded the immediate removal of the key and any links to it, citing the anti-circumvention provisions of the United States Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). In response to widespread Internet postings of the key, the AACS LA issued various press statements, praising those websites that complied with their requests for acting in a "responsible manner" and warning that "legal and technical tools" were adapting to the situation. The controversy was further escalated in early May 2007, when aggregate news site Dig ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Secure By Design
Secure by design, in software engineering, means that software products and capabilities have been designed to be foundationally secure. Alternate security strategies, tactics and patterns are considered at the beginning of a software design, and the best are selected and enforced by the architecture, and they are used as guiding principles for developers. It is also encouraged to use strategic design patterns that have beneficial effects on security, even though those design patterns were not originally devised with security in mind. Secure by Design is increasingly becoming the mainstream development approach to ensure security and privacy of software systems. In this approach, security is considered and built into the system at every layer and starts with a robust architecture design. Security architectural design decisions are based on well-known security strategies, tactics, and patterns defined as reusable techniques for achieving specific quality concerns. Security tact ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Presumed Security
Presumed security is a principle in security engineering that a system is safe from attack due to an attacker assuming, on the basis of probability, that it is secure. Presumed security is the opposite of security through obscurity. A system relying on security through obscurity may have actual security vulnerabilities, but its owners or designers deliberately make the system more complex in the hope that attackers are unable to find a flaw. Conversely a system relying on presumed security makes no attempt to address its security flaws, which may be publicly known, but instead relies upon potential attackers simply assuming that the target is not worth attacking. The reasons for an attacker to make this assumption may range from personal risk (the attacker believes the system owners can easily identify, capture and prosecute them) to technological knowledge (the attacker believes the system owners have sufficient knowledge of security techniques to ensure no flaws exist, rendering ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Obfuscated Code
In software development, obfuscation is the act of creating source or machine code that is difficult for humans or computers to understand. Like obfuscation in natural language, it may use needlessly roundabout expressions to compose statements. Programmers may deliberately obfuscate code to conceal its purpose ( security through obscurity) or its logic or implicit values embedded in it, primarily, in order to prevent tampering, deter reverse engineering, or even to create a puzzle or recreational challenge for someone reading the source code. This can be done manually or by using an automated tool, the latter being the preferred technique in industry. Overview The architecture and characteristics of some languages may make them easier to obfuscate than others. C, C++, and the Perl programming language are some examples of languages easy to obfuscate. Haskell is also quite obfuscatable despite being quite different in structure. The properties that make a language obfuscat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Need To Know
The term "need to know", when used by government and other organizations (particularly those related to the military or espionage), describes the restriction of data which is considered very sensitive. Under need-to-know restrictions, even if one has all the necessary official approvals (such as a security clearance) to access certain information, one would not be given access to such information, or read into a clandestine operation, unless one has a specific ''need to know''; that is, access to the information must be necessary for one to conduct one's official duties. This term also includes anyone that the people with the knowledge deemed necessary to share it with. As with most security mechanisms, the aim is to make it difficult for unauthorized access to occur, without inconveniencing legitimate access. Need-to-know also aims to discourage "browsing" of sensitive material by limiting access to the smallest possible number of people. Examples The Battle of Normandy in 1944 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Code Morphing
Code morphing is an approach used in obfuscating software to protect software applications from reverse engineering, analysis, modifications, and cracking. This technology protects intermediate level code such as compiled from Java and .NET languages (Oxygene (programming language), Oxygene, C Sharp (programming language), C#, Visual Basic, etc.) rather than binary object file, object code. Code morphing breaks up the protected code into several processor commands or small command snippets and replaces them by others, while maintaining the same end result. Thus the protector obfuscates the code at the intermediate level. Code morphing is a multilevel technology containing hundreds of unique code transformation patterns. In addition this technology transforms some intermediate layer commands into virtual machine commands (like P-code_machine, p-code). Code morphing does not protect against runtime tracing, which can reveal the execution logic of any protected code. Unlike other code ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
