Danger ahead for computers

[brownie]

From AFP:

SECURITY FLAW IN MICROCHIPS DISCOVERED

Article from: Agence France-Presse

RESEARCHERS have discovered a fundamental flaw in microprocessor technology that could allow hackers to obtain computer users' secret information, French daily Le Monde reported.

A team led by German cryptology expert Jean-Pierre Seifert has discovered that chips are now more vulnerable because of the way they are manufactured to to process data more quickly.

"Security has been sacrificed for the benefit of performance," said Mr Seifert quoted in Le Monde.

The danger of hackers breaking into computer chips, using a technique known as Branch Prediction Analysis (PBA), previously necessitated a very large number of attempts to decipher a cryptology key.

But Mr Seifert's research envisages that hackers will find it far easier and quicker in the future using a small piece of spy software that tracks microchips.

In a still-confidential study, Mr Seifert and his colleagues explain how they managed "in only one attempt" to obtain a 512-bit encryption key in just a few thousandths of a second.

Mr Seifert plans to demonstrate his method at the beginning of 2007 at an conference on encryption.

[Guy Berger]

Dammit, time to go back to the abacus.

Guy

[Claude]

The article in Le Monde (in french) gives more information about the problem:

http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-...1-835781,0.html

The main IT news sites haven't reported much on this, except for an article on Slashdot:

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/18/2030247