Security Adviser | Roger A. Grimes » May 2007

May 29, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Calculate necessary crypto key length

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Someone at Microsoft just turned me on to this cool site.

www.keylength.com

The site lists various standards and their recommended crypto sizes. You can click on any listed crypto algorithm and see how long a crypto key of that size should remain relatively protective. It's all generic and doesn't include a large number of external factors that would impact the key's overall useful life, but it is a starting point for reference.

I frequently have customers and readers ask me how long their key size should be for a particular application. It's like asking what car someone should buy? There's a lot of factors involved, with no single answer. In order to determine how long a particular cypto key should be you need to ask yourself many other questions first, including:
What is the value of the information you are protecting?
What is the security maturity of the company expecting the protection?
What is the likelihood of a sustained, multi-machine crack attack?
What are the regulatory requirements?
How often are the keys changed?
What cipher is used?

Crypto ciphers are just one mechanism to prevent a confidentiality leak. What other protections do you use? How is the information protected from physical attack?

Is the cipher algorithm protection mechanism implemented in hardware or software?

And so on.

Posted by Roger Grimes on May 29, 2007 04:14 PM

May 24, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Great information on AV testing and collection storage

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The International Antivirus Testing Workshop 2007 has some great slides on AV testing and maintaining malware collection systems.

http://www.f-prot.com/workshop2007/presentations.html

Some of the authors are among the best known names in AV over 20 years.

Posted by Roger Grimes on May 24, 2007 02:19 PM

May 24, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Honeyd Fixed and Ported to Windows

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I could not be more excited. Years ago, Michael Davis ported an early version of Honeyd (www.honeyd.org) to Windows as part of a Honeyd contest. It was an admirable attempt, but contained so many bugs that it really couldn't be used as a proper honeypot. As Windows changed versions, the older, ported, version of Honeyd remained the same, with bugs and less features than it's Linux/Unix/BSD counterpart. Every since my book, Honeypots for Windows, was published, I've been recommending Honeyd on Linux or OpenBSD for users who want to use Honeyd. Since most Windows users don't have nix skills, it was a lot to ask.

It was announced today that Jesper Jurcenoks with netVigilance has ported the latest, and feature rich version of Honeyd, and it is available for free download (registration is required).

They have also created an optional $99 GUI configurator. If you're new to Honeyd and want to have less problems, buy the gui and support the vendor.

You can download the Windows ported version of Honeyd here.

Posted by Roger Grimes on May 24, 2007 12:11 AM