3 ms·

>What this fails to address is that the cuts on your key are supposed to be a secret, and your behavior toward your keys should be the same as your behavior tow

by lsc 13y ago

>What this fails to address is that the cuts on your key are supposed to be a secret, and your behavior toward your keys should be the same as your behavior toward a password. You don't pass it around and you are very careful about who you trust it with. Well, if we are treating it as passwords, then we need to give every individual with access to the building their own key, with a different secret. I mean, we all know that shared 'role' accounts are a bad thing, right? you don't share passwords. Now, taking the password situation further, many places have a mechanical "root access" lock, with an electronic lock for all the 'users' - which makes a lot of sense to me. (further, much like non-sudo root on a server, it'd make sense that actual use of this 'root level access' should generate a long or alert somewhere, as even the admins should normally use their account and sudo as needed.)

kazagistar 13y ago
I think the main reason shared role accounts are worse then individual accounts is because it is easy in a computer to change a role, but harder to change the accounts for many people. With hardware, changing a "role" requires swapping logic inside of every lock that for the user's key: the lack of an abstraction layer makes it impossible. So, in the mechanical world, key-per-group is equally expensive to key-per-user in terms of replacement costs, but far harder to implement.
emhart 13y ago
So, this provides the lever to start discussing physical buildings as networks, which is a rich conversation, but I think your mention of the log is actually even more illuminating, because it points out a current (I think quite serious) issue in most electronic locking solutions. More often than not, they do not log the actual opening of the door, only the successful or failed authentication. So, if you can bypass said authentication to open the door[0] there is no record of the door having been opened by anyone. Logging in the physical security space is both important and incredibly overlooked. [0]http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/03/flaw_in_winkhau.html http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/03/flaw_in_winkha...
- lsc 13y ago
  the logging is in the camera system; Most camera systems have ways of saying 'fast forward to the next movement' as well as a way to say 'show me what things looked like at time X' - so in a real way, the DVR /is/ the log. I'm mostly familiar with electronic locks and cameras in the data center context, and in that context, yes, there is a completely analog key that often opens everything[1], but then there are electronically fired locks, and, of course, a camera. There is camera software that will time sync with the electronic lock and show you what user had authenticated while showing you a video of the user entering the building. I don't know of any systems that correlate cameras with key use, but the motion-sensing thing should do at least part of that. (There is also usually security sitting up front, but especially in the early AM when it's just us grunts? those folks are often not paying a whole heck of a lot of attention.) [1]well, on the fail secure systems, anyhow. the mag-locks that are 'fail safe' - that open on power failure usually don't have an obvious manual key override.

by lsc 13y ago

kazagistar 13y ago

I think the main reason shared role accounts are worse then individual accounts is because it is easy in a computer to change a role, but harder to change the accounts for many people. With hardware, changing a "role" requires swapping logic inside of every lock that for the user's key: the lack of an abstraction layer makes it impossible. So, in the mechanical world, key-per-group is equally expensive to key-per-user in terms of replacement costs, but far harder to implement.

emhart 13y ago

So, this provides the lever to start discussing physical buildings as networks, which is a rich conversation, but I think your mention of the log is actually even more illuminating, because it points out a current (I think quite serious) issue in most electronic locking solutions. More often than not, they do not log the actual opening of the door, only the successful or failed authentication. So, if you can bypass said authentication to open the door[0] there is no record of the door having been opened by anyone. Logging in the physical security space is both important and incredibly overlooked. [0]http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/03/flaw_in_winkhau.html http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/03/flaw_in_winkha...

lsc 13y ago
the logging is in the camera system; Most camera systems have ways of saying 'fast forward to the next movement' as well as a way to say 'show me what things looked like at time X' - so in a real way, the DVR /is/ the log. I'm mostly familiar with electronic locks and cameras in the data center context, and in that context, yes, there is a completely analog key that often opens everything[1], but then there are electronically fired locks, and, of course, a camera. There is camera software that will time sync with the electronic lock and show you what user had authenticated while showing you a video of the user entering the building. I don't know of any systems that correlate cameras with key use, but the motion-sensing thing should do at least part of that. (There is also usually security sitting up front, but especially in the early AM when it's just us grunts? those folks are often not paying a whole heck of a lot of attention.) [1]well, on the fail secure systems, anyhow. the mag-locks that are 'fail safe' - that open on power failure usually don't have an obvious manual key override.