quote: Brian SNOW, Consider the use of smart cards

19 May 2012

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"Dropping support for a broken crypto primitive is hard in practice
- but crypto can be broken overnight
- what do we do if SHA-1 or RSA falls tomorrow?"

Alexander Sotirov, Marc Stevens, Jacob Appelbaum, Arjen Lenstra, David Molnar, Dag Arne Osvik, Benne de Wegerr, "MD5 considered harmful today - Creating a rogue CA certificate", December 2008
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"Some physicists predicted that within the next 10 to 20 years quantum computers will be built that are sufficiently powerful to implement Shor’s ideas and to break all existing public key schemes. Thus we need to look ahead to a future of quantum computers, and we need to prepare the cryptographic world for that future.”

Prof Seth Lloyd of MIT, MIT Review 2008

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"In the medium term, we need to be prepared for the eventuality that large quantum computers could be built: this would require an upgrade of most symmetric cryptographic algorithms and a completely new generation of public-key algorithms."

SecurIST, “D3.3 – ICT Security & Dependability Research beyond 2010: Final Strategy”, January 2007

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Information assurance

quote: Brian SNOW, Consider the use of smart cards

Consider the use of smart cards, smart badges, or other hardware tokens for especially critical functions. Although more costly than software, when properly implemented the assurance gain is great. The form-factor is not as important as the existence of an isolated processor and address space for assured operations – an ‘Island of Security,’ if you will. Such devices can communicate with each other through secure protocols and provide a web of security connecting secure nodes located across a sea of insecurity in the global net.

Brian Snow, Former Technical Director of the US National Security Agency (NSA), "We need assurance!", 1999-2008

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