Internet: lack of built-in security

In his office within the gleaming-stainless-steel and orange-brick jumble of MIT's Stata Center, Internet elder statesman and onetime chief protocol architect David D. Clark prints out an old PowerPoint talk. Dated July 1992, it ranges over technical issues like domain naming and scalability. But in one slide, Clark points to the Internet's dark side: its lack of built-in security.

NEWS Alert - From India!
Tapping for dummies
Cellphone tapping is becoming child's play. In recent months, mobile phone tapping is in public glare. The State-owned telecom giant BSNL says, "With computer-based portable interception devices that not only record conversation and SMS remotely but also organise it neatly in a database for future references, tapping into cellphones is becoming child's play. Cellphone tapping has been made easier by a device called the multi track system (MTS)."

More related Content:
..Top Security Trends for 2006 Security threats will become more sophisticated in 2006, keeping security startups and their customers on their toes December 25, 2005
..Securing the Information Infrastructure, By Alan S. Brown
..Top Five Security Threats for 2006, January 9, 2006, By Linda LeBlanc
..Brian Krebs on Computer Security: Conning the Con

Read the review I wrote on this security, safety and etc., as Infostructure in geopardy?, February 28, 2006, The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash Between Freedom and Control is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System, by Siva Vaidhyanathan

Two other articles are relevant in case you are interested in this area of Information Anarchy:

Information Anarchy or Information Utopia?, By JAMES G. NEAL, The Chronicle of Higher Education,
12/9/2005 [This article includes the following points]

>>>>The relationships between libraries and faculty members will be disruptive. We must more effectively integrate the library into the academic enterprise. Libraries must be professors' partners, not their servants.
>>>>Users' expectations will be disruptive. If we don't listen more carefully to our students and faculty members about what they want, our collections and services will not meet their needs.
>>>>Technology applications and infrastructure will be disruptive if we don't build and support new hardware, software, and networks. We need reliability, capacity, and access to emerging technologies. That means a renaissance in the working relationship between libraries and campus information-technology organizations.
>>>>The development of information standards will be disruptive if we don't rethink the process for reconceiving, debating, endorsing, and maintaining them through our national and global organizations.

Another important article: INFORMATION ANARCHY AND THE CONTROL OF CRYPTOGRAPHY , By: Dickson, Kirby G., Information Systems Security, 1065898X, Winter95, Vol. 3, Issue 4

Cryptography is intended to offer a defense against the threat of unauthorized disclosure of information. Yet, without proper controls, it can be a potential cause of information loss. Donn Parker has argued that lack of control over cryptography will lead eventually to information anarchy. He defines information anarchy as a condition in which "control and use of information is in the hands of a different set of people than those who are accountable for it, have jurisdiction over it, and own it." Information anarchy results primarily from use of cryptography without any means of ensuring that the key needed to decode encrypted information is unfailingly available to those who need the information and are responsible for it. Its remedy, therefore, is based on the principle that the knowledge of cryptographic keys and their correspondence to particular sets of encrypted information should not be limited to persons who initiate encryption but should also be available to responsible individuals within an organization in a controlled and secure manner

[the themes here include: THE RISE OF INFORMATION ANARCHY; THE PREVENTION OF INFORMATION; Forbidding the Use of Cryptography; Controlling the Use of Cryptography; Cryptographic controls require two essential elements; REPOSITORIES AND KEY ESCROW; NEXT STEPS; IN THE MEANTIME]