The CyberSecurity Emperor Has No Clothes

In the past year, I’ve written numerous articles that have a common theme: the security world is badly broken as crypto schemas developed in the 90’s are no defense for today’s sophisticated hackers. For the most part, my blogs have been very well received, and have been picked up and posted by multiple sites and publications worldwide. However, I’ve also been harshly criticized by some readers who stated in so many words that I was “crying wolf,” or behaving like the beloved Chicken Little (The sky is falling! The sky is falling!).

Well, I’m not one to shout “I told you so” when theories or treatises that I’ve communicated are validated, but in this case, I’m doing just that. Not because I want people to know that what I and many others have been saying is correct, but that because we are correct, the connected world as we know it is about to become a highly vulnerable, dangerous place – and those with the power to make change need to do so and quickly.

I know. So far, I’m writing more of the same. But this time around, my views are backed up by researchers at the University of Toronto. In an eye-opening article published on yournewswire.com by Baxter Dmitry, he writes about:

“a breakthrough that is possibly the biggest event in computer science and financial services for 50 years.” And what does this breakthrough mean? The articles sub-title says it all…

All current banking transactions, digital signatures, network communications, credit and debit card transactions, not to mention personal communications have been compromised.

You can read Dmitry’s insightful story here.

What do all of the above applications have in common? They all are “protected” by encryption security that relies on a known, secret prime that until now has not been discovered. Now that it has been compromised, things could get ugly in our e-world, very soon.

If true, this means that the security of anything RSA (SSH, SSL, TLS, S/MIME, OpenPGP) and ECC is being called into question and may crumble at any time.

You can learn more about prime numbers and their role in the crypto world in this brief, informative video,

What’s the solution?

A cryptographic schema that utilizes random numbers and other elements, as opposed to the factoring of prime numbers as the underpinnings of its security. (Can you say IBE 3.0?)

To learn more about IBE 3.0 and its broad applicability, please contact me on Linkedin.