Mathematicians have known since Euclid that axioms are important.
Security, though, is math embedded in the real world, and that
matters. Put another way, Euclidean geometry is completely valid as a
pure mathematical system. But that doesn’t mean it applies in a
relativistic universe. Sure, we live far from any space-warping
masses, so we can pretend that the angles in our triangles add up to
180 degrees. In the security world, though, the attacker will toss a
black hole at us to warp the space around our provably-secure
triangular encryptor. Was that proof of security flawed? Ask Riemann
or Lobachevsky.

Accurate models of how the Internet works give insight into where its weakest links are located and how to simulate the network’s behavior under certain circumstances.

Part of the lecture’s data was acquired using traceroute and thorny technical details like detecting aliased IPs and load balancers were skipped.

Some highlights of the talk are:

1. Usage of economic models and current technological constraints to model the network (the resulting topology should be efficient).
2. Pitfalls of paying too much attention to power laws.
3. Differences between the real Internet and scale-free networks.

I believe some of the points the author makes could be applied as well to overlay (P2P) networks.

Further links:

• A First-Principles Approach to Understanding the Internet’s Router-Level Topology
• Towards a Theory of Scale-Free Graphs: Definition, Properties, and Implications (Extended Version)

Each key on computer keyboards, telephones and even ATM machines makes a unique sound as each key is depressed and released, according to a paper entitled “Keyboard Acoustic Emanations” presented Monday by IBM research scientist Dmitri Asonov. All that is needed is about $200 worth of microphones and sound processing and PC neural networking software. Today’s keyboard, telephone keypads, ATM machines and even door locks have a rubber membrane underneath the keys. “This membrane acts like a drum, and each key hits the drum in a different location and produces a unique frequency or sound that the neural networking software can decipher,” said Asonov.

They said that although the name of a country had been blacked out in that memorandum, their software showed that it was highly likely the document named South Korea as having helped the Iraqis.

I want to highlight Shamir’s three laws of security:

• Absolutely secure systems do not exist
• To halve your vulnerability, you have to double your expenditure
• Cryptography is typically bypassed, not penetrated

The first two points show the importance of effective risk assessment while the third one emphasizes the fact that implementation flaws (opposed to algorithm design flaws) are usually the reason why systems using cryptography are subject to security breaches.