Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category
Pros and Cons of Asymmetric Cryptography
Quick disclaimer: I love cryptography. I don’t fully understand the math that goes into it, but I love it all the same.
Something that has baffled me for quite some time is why we don’t see more cryptography in consumer computing. Passwords, simple authentication tokens, are ubiquitous, even on single-user Windows computers. Real encryption, on the other hand, in virtually non-existant.
Why?
What Kills Old Technology?
When I was much, much younger, I was online. Every summer, I would spend a couple weeks with my grandparents. My uncle, a professor of computer science at a nearby college, secured for me a spare computer, a modem, and user account. A handshake later and I was connected to the network. A further authentication and I was online.
Looking back, the early internet didn’t really do much. I had access to a wealth of information, and I would spend hours crawling through Gopherspace, soaking up information like a sponge. Years later, and Gopher is a figment of the past, lost forever to the ever-evolving digital landscape.
What kills old technology?
The Network Really is the Computer
Sun Microsystems, one of the stalwarts of the computing industry, has a simple motto: “the network is the computer.” Yesterday, Google took that motto to an entirely new level with the announcement of it’s Chrome OS.
Details on Chrome are sparse (which has not stopped technology writers from writing ad nauseum about all the features it will have). What it appears from Google’s press release, however, is that Chrome will be an incarnation of the old “network computer” (NC) concept, where the bulk of the computing will be conducted on centralized servers. Rebranded “cloud computing”, this server-centric model is the latest fad.
NCs have a significant limitation not found in personal computers: to fully function, an NC requires a constant, reliable network connection. Chrome will likely utilize Google’s “Gears” framework. Even so, the dramatic push of an entire operating environment to the web seems both radical and unwise. When Gmail went down for several hours earlier this year, the world panicked. The harm caused by a Gmail outage will be miniscule compared to an outage of thousands of computers.
It is far too early to tell if Chrome will be a mere dumb terminal or something far more sophisticated. A number of important questions also remain to be answered, such as how open the Chrome platform will be, the willingness of people to adopt a new operating platform, and the response of the existing operating system developers.
Government Botnets
Earlier this morning, while listening to a story about the use of social media in Iran, a thought occurred to me: would governments have a need for their own botnets?
To be clear, I’m not suggesting that governments have any such networks nor are actively creating them. I am not suggesting, either, some massive international conspiracy. Rather, I am curious if this technique would be useful for states.
Cyberspace will be, by all accounts, the next major battlefront in international warfare. Given that there are few, if any, casualties on the battlefield, cyber-attacks will likely be more commonplace. States who are merely hostile towards one another and not engaged in active combat may utilize cyber-attacks against one another, such as the recent war between Georgia and Russia.
In their current incarnation, botnets provide malicious individuals or organizations the means to tap into a supermassive computer network. Malware infects the personal computers of unsuspecting individuals, allowing for The most common use of a botnet is to conduct distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, but other uses are possible.
Governments of sufficient size, such as the United States, would likely not need a botnet. These governments have more that sufficient resources and talent to conduct more sophisticated forms of attack. Furthermore, the political and social risks of being caught operating such a network would be too great.
On the other hand, smaller governments, especially governments that are much more restrictive or even totalitarian, would have every incentive to create such networks. These governments have limited resources at their disposal, insufficient resources to dedicate to cyber-warfare, and a growing need to counteract the internet as a tool of political and social change.
In the end, botnets may not prove to be an effective tool. States wishing to stifle true dissent may simply choose to disable access to the internet entirely. A botnet may only prove useful as a tool of war between states, or between states and non-state actors (e.g., terrorist groups). Still, it is worth considering the possibility of the botnet as a tool of warfare, if only to protect against it.
