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It would be nice if massive meant "more secure," but the real relationship is not between an organization's size and its security, rather it's about how much th
by thirsteh 13y ago
It would be nice if massive meant "more secure," but the real relationship is not between an organization's size and its security, rather it's about how much that organization tries to minimize, or displace, risk. Very large organizations tend to not specifically care that something is provably secure so much as they want contractor X to be liable if something bad happens because of it.
Some organizations--and even though it's easy to mock Apple here, I do believe they're one of them--sufficiently appreciate that improving security minimizes risk, and so spend a decent amount of money on it. You could argue they failed here, but even Adam Langley who essentially "is SSL" at Google admits he's not sure they have a test that simulates an attack on a possible similar implementation error in their own code (though he does argue that such an error would have been caught in Google's code review process.)
In any case, an attention to security is certainly not something that is borne out of an organization's revenue or number of employees.
- cbhl 13y agoI'm under the impression that Apple prides itself on having a smaller number of very dedicated employees that are perfectionists. I can totally see this being "innocent 2AM mis-judgement call by a single employee", judging from what my peers tell me of Apple's corporate culture. I do think that Adam Langley's suggestion that code review would help is plausible, but it merely just means that more than one person has to make the same mistake in a judgement call. (It reduces the probability of such an error happening; it doesn't theoretically eliminate it.)
- Create 13y agoI can totally see this being "innocent 2AM mis-judgement call by a single employee", judging from what my peers tell me of Apple's corporate culture. https://support.apple.com/library/APPLE/APPLECARE_ALLGEOS/HT5780/Crypto_Officer_Role_Guide_for_FIPS%20140-2_Compliance_iOS_6.pdf https://support.apple.com/library/APPLE/APPLECARE_ALLGEOS/HT... We begin therefore where they are determined not to end, with the question whether any form of democratic self-government, anywhere, is consistent with the kind of massive, pervasive, surveillance into which the Unites Sta tes government has led not only us but the world. This should not actually be a complicated inquiry. http://snowdenandthefuture.info/events.html http://snowdenandthefuture.info/events.html
- cbhl 13y agoFIPS 140-2 certification isn't remotely an indication of correctness of code, for better or worse. Take, for example, the implementation Dual EC DRBG in the FIPS 140-2 certified OpenSSL module -- it was fatally flawed, and has never worked in practice. (It will be removed from the next version of the module in light of developments in the past year.) https://lwn.net/Articles/578375/ https://lwn.net/Articles/578375/