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Identity theft is one of America's fastest growing crimes. After having my identity stolen, having my credit card info breached multiple times, and enduring constant bot attacks on SemiWiki (mostly from China), security is a big deal for me. Seriously, our way of life is at risk here!
Tim Cook, Apple CEO, spoke at Stanford recently about internet security:
Unfortunatly "Security" and it's variants are not key search terms for SemiWiki. More than 1/3 of our traffic is from search engines, we are writing about security quite frequently but the traffic is not coming. People do not seem to care. This should scare you because it certainly scares me!
Watch the video, take a serious look at what you do on your smartphone and what it knows about you then tell me: Do you trust the manufacturer of the phone that is critical to your way of life or death?
Security is very important to me, so yes, the reputation of the Smart Phone company or even App makes a difference. The last time that my banking identity was stolen was after I used a free WiFi connection and stupidly did some online banking, lesson learned - only do online banking with a secured WiF connection.
Security is becoming next key area of SoC design. In last few years we have seen how designer has started put more importance on power than chip performance due to proliferation of battery powered device. In the IoT age we will see security emerging as one of key areas of interest for chip designer. EDA tools and IP companies are expected to evolve around "Design for Security"
Now you know, how vulnerable is WiFi and other wireless connectivity for IoT security. More than SoC harware, it's time to secure connectivity and software to make IoT successful.
Security is definitely a key concern, that's one reason I never do financial transactions from publicly available networks
Identity theft is one of America's fastest growing crimes. After having my identity stolen, having my credit card info breached multiple times, and enduring constant bot attacks on SemiWiki (mostly from China), security is a big deal for me. Seriously, our way of life is at risk here!
Here in old Europe identity theft is much less pronounced but then we also have national identity cards.
To answer the question in the topic, I'll trust a Chinese Smartphone as much as an American one. Snowden/Greenwald claim each Apple phone can be overtaken by the security services.
Interesting question, because in terms of security:
Will You Trust a Chinese Smartphone with chips designed and made not in USA?
Will You Trust a Chinese Smartphone with components designed and made not in USA?
But with more and more revelation of NSA activities, I'm wondering:
Will you trust ANY phones with components "designed" by an American company?
Will you trust ANY phones with certain features and connectivity to any American companies?
I'm not sure who is really on the "good" side of computer security! I even suspect many serious hacking incidents made possible by utilizing some back doors or holes created/designed by NSA. Yes, NSA has good intention to do whatever to "protect" us. But those back doors and holes NSA designed and implemented can be used by other countries too.
FYI - There's an interesting panel discussion scheduled for Tuesday, March 3 at the ISQED event, Santa Clara: Hardware and System Security
12:30PM~1:30PM Great America Meeting Room 3
Industry Panel on Hardware and System Security
Chair & Moderator: Prof. Bao Liu - University of Texas at San Antonio
Panelists: Rob Aitken - ARM Ernie Brickell - Intel Lawrance Case - Freescale Richard Newell , Microsemi Brandon Wang - Cadence
Summary: Hardware is the foundation of any security system. In recent years, a growing number of software-based security solutions have been migrated to hardware for enhanced resistance against software-based attacks. However, recent research has revealed that hardware is also subject to a number of security attacks. The emerging Internet-of-Things and Cyber-Physical Systems further demand achieving security for a complex system including software, hardware and firmware components against software, hardware and/or firmware-based attacks in a dynamic and possibly hostile environment under tight resource constraints. In this interactive session, a group of leading industry experts will explore the various opportunities and challenges that the security requirement brings to the semiconductor industry.
I guess the question is WHO will you trust with your personal data because someone is going to have it. My vote goes to Apple, for now anyway. I trust Tim Cook.
I guess the question is WHO will you trust with your personal data because someone is going to have it. My vote goes to Apple, for now anyway. I trust Tim Cook.
I am hosting my own server for my personal data. I'm oldschool, I don't like my personal data being used for commercial purposes by companies. Yes my server is hosted by a commercial hoster but they don't have any commercial interest in the data stored on my server. Although they don't have any password the data is not encrypted on disk so the company could access the data if they want to or are forced to.
"The way the Superfish functionality appears to work means that they must be intercepting traffic in order to insert the ads," said Eric Rand, a researcher at Brown Hat Security. "This amounts to a wiretap."
