Linux Mint 15 "Olivia" Xfce Desktop with Mint-Minimal Icon Theme by +Paulo Silva |
Linux Advocate Dietrich Schmitz shows how the general public can take action to truly protect their privacy using GnuPG with Evolution email. Read the details.
Linux Advocate Dietrich Schmitz officially endorses what he deems is a truly secure, easy to use PGP email encryption program. Read the details.
Linux Advocate Dietrich Schmitz reminds CIOs that XP Desktops destined for MS end of life support can be reprovisioned with FOSS Linux to run like brand new. Read how.
Linux Advocate shares news that the U.S. Treasury will treat Bitcoin as a Commodity 'Investment'. Read the details.
Linux Advocate Dietrich Schmitz puts out a public service privacy warning. Google Drive gets a failing grade on protecting your privacy.
Email needs an overhaul. Privacy must be integrated.
Cookie Cutter Distros Don't Cut It
The 'Linux Inside' Stigma - It's real and it's a problem.
Linux Advocate Dietrich Schmitz reminds readers of a long ago failed petition by Mathematician Prof. Donald Knuth for stopping issuance of Software Patents.
Linux Mint 15 "Olivia" Xfce Desktop with Mint-Minimal Icon Theme by +Paulo Silva |
The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has vehemently denied accusations that it deliberately weakened encryption standards to help the NSA's monitoring activities.
"We want to assure the IT cybersecurity community that the transparent, public process used to rigorously vet our standards is still in place," said NIST in a statement.
"NIST would not deliberately weaken a cryptographic standard. We will continue in our mission to work with the cryptographic community to create the strongest possible encryption standards for the U.S. government and industry at large."
NIST took a big credibility hit unfortunately. There are good people there doing good work but we don't know which of their standards are tainted, we don't know how much collaboration there is with the NSA.
And unfortunately because trust is lost when they get up and say the NSA doesn't affect our standards we don't believe them. We need a way to get back trust.
"...However, according to RSA Laboratories, "in all of these cases, it is the implementation technique that is patented, not the prime or representation, and there are alternative, compatible implementation techniques that are not covered by the patents."[3] Additionally,Daniel J. Bernstein has stated that he is "not aware of" patents that cover the Curve25519 elliptic curve Diffie–Hellman algorithm or its implementation.[4] RFC 6090, published in February 2011, documents ECC techniques, some of which were published so long ago that even if they were patented any such patents for these previously published techniques would now be expired...."
"...Despite the NSA's ability to crack web encryption with these means, Wired's Kim Zetter notes that "these methods don’t involve cracking the algorithms and the math underlying the encryption, but rather rely upon circumventing and otherwise undermining encryption."
And Snowden himself said during a Q&A with The Guardian in June that cryptography works.
"Properly implemented strong crypto systems are one of the few things that you can rely on," he said...."