Schneier: New Attack on AES

Bruce Schneier notes on his blog a new cryptanalytic attack on AES that is better than brute force.

He also notes:

While this attack is better than brute force — and some cryptographers will describe the algorithm as “broken” because of it — it is still far, far beyond our capabilities of computation. The attack is, and probably forever will be, theoretical. But remember: attacks always get better, they never get worse. Others will continue to improve on these numbers. While there’s no reason to panic, no reason to stop using AES, no reason to insist that NIST choose another encryption standard, this will certainly be a problem for some of the AES-based SHA-3 candidate hash functions.

Read the entire post here.

Article - Study ranks RIM, WinMo and iPhone on Security

(June 1, 2009) - From an article at Daily Tech:

A new study by Lopez Research, founded by President Maribel Lopez, a former Forrester Research analyst tackles this question, looking at these three top competitors in the smart phone arena.  The study was broken down into three categories — device, network, and transmission.  It gives a score of 0 to 4 (highest) to each competitor for each category.

Click here for the full article and rankings.

Article - Spam accounted for 90 percent of all email traffic

(May 29, 2009) - According to a report released by Symantec Message Labs, junk mail accounted for 90.4% of all email in May.

An article from SC Magazine discussing the report is here.

The Symantec report in PDF format is here.

Article on iPhone application security in Network World

In the second in a series on iPhone security, Professor Richard Steinberger from the MSIA Program at Norwich University provides a very high level analysis of the security environment for iPhone applications.

Read the article here.

Article on “meaningful use” for Healthcare IT status

Healthcare IT News has an interesting article on the definition of “meaningful use” as it relates to the usage of EHR per the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. From the article:

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act sets aside $20 billion for direct funding and incentives for providers who implement electronic health records and use them in a “meaningful” way beginning in 2010. However, the bill leaves it to the Health and Human Services Secretary to determine what kinds of actions constitute “meaningful use,” and some analysts say that ambiguity built into the law could actually delay the lengthy acquisition and implementation process.

For the entire article, go here.

Odyssey Healthcare to present mobile healthcare solutions at RIM’s WES conference

(May 4, 2009) - Odyssey Healthcare representatives with be participating in panels and presentations at RIM’s WES conference in Orlando, Florida May 5-7, 2009. Odyssey will discuss their mobile solutions, including AppMobilizer by Media Sourcery, used for mobile visit notes, symptom assessments and other functions.

Odyssey is one of the largest hospice providers in the country, offering personalized care and support to thousands of patients and their families across the country each day.

The session information:

Conficker worm found in hospital equipment

(From the SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS - May 1, 2009) - A computer worm that has alarmed security experts around the world has crawled into hundreds of medical devices at dozens of hospitals in the United States and other countries, according to technologists monitoring the threat.

The worm, known as “Conficker,” has not harmed any patients, they say, but it poses a potential threat to hospital operations.

“A few weeks ago, we discovered medical devices, MRI machines, infected with Conficker,” said Marcus Sachs, director of the Internet Storm Center, an early-warning system for Internet threats .

Around March 24, researchers monitoring the worm noticed that an imaging machine was reaching out over the Internet to get instructions — presumably from the programmers who created Conficker.

The researchers discovered that more than 300 similar devices at hospitals around the world had been compromised. The manufacturer of the devices told them none of the machines were supposed to be connected to the Internet — and yet they were.

Normally, the solution would be simply to install a patch, which Microsoft released in October. But the device manufacturer said rules from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration required that a 90-day notice before the machines could be patched.

“For 90 days these infected machines could easily be used in an attack, including, for example, the leaking of patient information,” said Rodney Joffe, a senior vice president at NeuStar, a communications company that belongs to an industry working group created to deal with the worm.

AT&T Fast Pitch semi-finalist; presenting at CTIA

(April 2, 2009 - Las Vegas, Nevada) - Media Sourcery was selected a finalist in the Enterprise division of AT&T’s Fast Pitch program. Semi-finalists present at CTIA in Las Vegas to a roundtable of AT&T executives.

AppMobilizer selected “Judge’s Choice” in Nokia’s Calling All Innovators Contest

(February 5, 2009 - Barcelona, Spain) - AppMobilizer, Media Sourcery’s solution to help Enterprises mobilize their applications securely and quickly, was awarded a “Judge’s Choice” award in Nokia’s Calling All Innovators competition. These awards were presented at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.

Media Sourcery featured in SmartPhone.Biz-News

(September 30, 2008) - Media Sourcery and its secure mobile solutions were the featured article on SmartPhone.Biz-News.com. The article is excerpted below and can be found here.

Epitomised by RIM’s BlackBerry, with its reputation for secure email and text messaging, smartphones remain a powerful data communication tool for companies.

Larry Ketchersid, chairman and CEO of Media Sourcery, believes that role is likely to gain in importance as more enterprises latch on to the benefits of utilising smartphone-based products.

But security and data regulations have to be a major consideration when dealing with highly sensitive information.

His company has developed a secure smartphone application called Mobile Data Messenger (MDM) that allows the sending and receiving of encrypted traffic. (more…)