umjgheitma

March 10th, 2010 at 4:15 PM ^

"The man has only one look, for Christ's sake! Blue Steel? Ferrari? Le Tigra? They're the same face! Doesn't anybody notice this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills! I invented the piano key necktie, I invented it! What have you done, Derek?"

Joined: 12/02/2008

MGoPoints: 2388

Blazefire

March 10th, 2010 at 4:22 PM ^

U of M nerds are cracking the world's most advanced encryptions, while the rest of us putter around trying to keep our systems free of spyware. Awesome.

Joined: 04/17/2009

MGoPoints: 25038

gum-bercules

March 10th, 2010 at 5:37 PM ^

If you have physical access to a server, you can snoop the private information it uses to hide its communication with its users by tricking it into thinking its hardware is failing. Some clever electrical engineers out there might use this to decipher DRM keys stored on DVRs or iPods or whatever, but it is pretty unlikely to find a practical application. Plus, most computer scientists would tell you if that somebody has access to your hardware, you are already hosed. If that explanation has earned me a two-sentence soapbox: the Engadget people don't understand what they're talking about when they say "until RSA hopefully fixes the flaw" because the while this paper suggests a new class of attacks, the attacks themselves are dependent on the physical implementation of the algorithm. You should track these types of stories on Slashdot instead, where they're not perfect either, but their user community is far superior. http://linux.slashdot.org/story/10/03/04/1954259/Researchers-Find-Way-T…

Joined: 03/31/2009

MGoPoints: 31