Decius wrote:

While some storage-product companies already support one sort of encryption or another, having standard implementations could make it easier for customers to safeguard data across heterogeneous storage environments, standards supporters say.

The proposed standards define three encryption algorithms and a method of key management designed to ensure the compatibility and interoperability of different storage gear. For encryption on disk, the specification proposes using the new Liskov, Rivest, Wagner-Advanced Encryption Standard (LRW-AES) cryptographic algorithm. For tape encryption, it proposes using the National Institutes of Standards and Technologies' (NIST) AES Galois/Counter Mode (AES-GCM) and AES Counter with CBC-MAC Mode (AES-CCM) standards.

Galois/Counter Mode? BTW this article's comments about CBC are wrong. You cannot do arbirary data mangling in CBC. He is thinking of ECB. The problem with CBC is its slow...

Until relatively recently, many folks didn't really understand the gravity of chosen ciphertext attacks on the standard modes of encryption. The common attitude has been that the ciphertext is opaque somehow and tamper-resistent because if anyone changes it, it will just decrypt to "garbage."

In fact there are practical attacks on some implementations of CBC (e.g. Vaudenay's "padding oracle" attack (Vaudenay02)) that can completely unravel it. Standard cipher modes tend to have the characteristic that every ciphertext will decrypt to "something" so if your adversary has an opportunity to submit arbitrary ciphertexts to you for decryption, you absolutely must authenticate the ciphertext somehow.

The obvious thing to do here is to run some MAC over your CT but there have been some efforts recently (e.g. Rogaway's patent-encumbered OFB mode) to devise authenticated encryption modes with marginal overhead above and beyond that of encrypting the data.

Black and Uturbia's Usenix Security 02 paper on this.

RE: Standards on the way for encrypting data on tape, disk

Welcome to the web pages of the Astronomical Applications Department of the U.S. Naval Observatory. Our products - almanacs, software, and web services - provide precise astronomical data for practical applications, serving the defense, scientific, commercial, and civilian communities.

Found looking for sunrise/sunset times.

USNO Astronomical Applications Department

Arnold Schwarzenegger was virtually unstoppable on his motorcycle as the Terminator, but a minor accident Sunday on his Harley-Davidson sent the governor to the hospital for 15 stitches in his lip.

Schwarzenegger gets 15 stitches on lip after hitting car

What took it so long? The Dow Jones industrial average closed above 11,000 Monday for the first time in more than four years -- one indicator of Wall Street's slow recovery from terror attacks, recession and corporate scandals.

Dow 'Catching Up' As It Closes Above 11,000

For some years now the general uptake of IPv6 has appeared to be “just around the corner”. Yet the Internet industry has so far failed to pick up and run with this message, and it continues to be strongly reluctant to make any substantial widespread commitment to deploy IPv6. Some carriers are now making some initial moves in terms of migrating their internet infrastructure over to a dual protocol network, but for many others it’s a case of still watching and waiting for what they think is the optimum time to make a move.

Gold star.

IPv6: Extinction, Evolution or Revolution?

In a very unusual keynote address Friday, Google CEO Larry Page urged the consumer electronics industry to make life easier for consumers by standardizing things like power supplies.

It was totally unreal to be in the room with everyone watching this live.

Larry Page, Robin Williams rock CES

Mozilla Corp.'s Firefox browser finished the year with a flourish, a Web measurement firm said Wednesday, and came within half a point of the 10 percent market share that many analysts have set as the bar to long-term success against Microsoft's leading Internet Explorer.

1 In 10 Now Use Mozilla's Firefox

A more important issue, one on which the silence is deafening, is that authentication systems are useless without some sort of reputation database. You get a message, it’s 100% authenticated that it came from flurble.net but you’ve never heard of flurble.net. Now what? The unstated assumptions seem to be that for now we all have our informal private lists of friendly domains that we will whitelist, and eventually there will be shared reputation systems to plug into. The faith in shared reputation systems is touching, particularly considering all of the moaning and groaning there is about DNSBLs, the reputation systems that exist now.

The Politics of Email Authentication, 2006 Edition

"The whole landscape has been basically sullied by litigators," said Wayne Rosso, former president of Grokster, who has been devising a new authorized online service called Mashboxx. "Most of the companies' resources are put into litigation instead of their core business, which is finding and marketing new fresh talent. Unless they start thinking differently, then I think the decline is going to keep going."

Album Sales Shift Back to a Decline

In a national campaign aimed squarely at Wal-Mart Stores, lawmakers in 30 states are preparing to introduce legislation that would require large corporations to increase spending on employee health insurance, according to the A.F.L.-C.I.O., which planned to announce the initiative this morning.

Wal-Mart in Their Sights, States Press for Health Benefits