The $2 Billion Myth

The latest crypto debacle -- the Dutch transport card -- is a great example of how real value creation can prevented by myth and ego. The story is about the break of the Dutch government's transportation payment smart-card system - reportedly having cost $2 billion - as a result of the cards' cryptography functions being fundamentally flawed. (Ed Felton has (no surprise) good coverage of the break and the technical issues.)

The short story is that the card's designers used a custom, secret encryption scheme that turned out to be easily broken by attackers. Of course, as many readers will know, secret algorithms are one of the basic no-no's of modern cryptography - as is the use of custom algorithms.The current standard ciphers are the result of an enormous amount of scrutiny and work by very highly trained specialists, and the greatest likelihood is that a custom cipher will be flawed and breakable. So it's rather an odd decision for any system designer choose to forgo the low effort and high value of using standard crypto and instead invest in developing a custom cipher - to say nothing adding insult to injury by ignoring basic crypto principles about secret algorithms and short keys. Yet that's exactly what the designers of the Dutch transport card did.

You have to ask, why? Well in reality we'll never know what they thought, but here is my explanation about what might be the reason why, perhaps in this case but certainly in other cases I've seen and others my colleagues have seen. The answer is: Julius Caesar, Sherlock Holmes, Dick Tracy, secret de-coder rings, and the like - in other words, the myth of crypto, it's cool! Well, some really bad ideas - like making a custom cipher - have incredible staying power, despite many counter-examples, because of support from a powerful myth. Lots of techies had fun earlier in life playing with ciphers, or reading fact or fiction where crypto played a role. Look, I can break a cipher like Sherlock Holmes! Fun - and in fact you can find letter substitution cipher puzzles in some daily newspapers.

If you're still in the grip of the myth, and think crypto is cool, and think you're very clever, then it might make a sort of manic sense to think that you could roll your own and invent something new and valuable. But the real fact of the matter is that modern cryptography isn't cool, isn't fun, isn't something you can't do yourself - not anymore. Modern crypto is nearly pure math, finding functions that are hard to reverse, search spaces that are very very large, and so on - and oh yes, poking holes in others' attempts to do so. Doing the work behind making and breaking ciphers is the domain of very highly educated or extremely brilliant self-trained applied mathematicians with years and years of experience -- and they often don't get it right the first time, or the second, or the third. For the rest of us, there are the newspaper puzzles, Holmes, Tracey, and the like -- very sorry if this is bad news for you.

For those of you for whom it is not news, there's still the question: you're making a new product, you have a finite budget, and there's always more good ideas than budget - how could you possibly choose to expend budget and time on such as wheel-inventing exercise as a custom cipher? Even allowing for ignorance or manic self-confidence, there is a lesson for most of us. The lesson is about the difference in extrinsic (or visible or demonstrable) value vs. intrinsic value that we believe in ourselves. The MiFare folks believed that a custom cipher would be a better mousetrap, that is they thought themselves that it would stronger in some way. All mis-guided of course, but even if it were a better mousetrap, why would that create real value? Is there a problem with standard crypto? In this case, the real answer is that standard crypto would have met the product requirements just fine, and the product development effort could have been done cheaper or faster or with better features in some way. No one would have known or cared about the specifics of the crypto inside, no matter how much "better" the custom cypto was or wasn't.

So in general, when we're working on something new, when we have a number of different innovations that we could invest in, there's always a trade-off analysis. The main decision factor is whether the value of the innovation will be visible. Is the new product with the innovation better than the new product without the innovation, in any way that you can point to and explain simply? Justifications like "The foobar gizmo is way better than the other gizmos" won't do.

It's hard to avoid myths, and ego, and really durable recurring bad ideas. They'll crop up. But to ensure that they don't end up flushing $2 billion, I at least have a good litmus test: if I decide X and the result is Y, could I explain Y and justify X to my grandfather? He was a tough-minded but fair man, God rest his soul, and the Dutch transport cards couldn't have put this past him. I bet you know some people just like he was - ask them!

Forward Ho? No!

The term “forward security” doesn’t mean much to most people, but here is one definition: a myth that you should not bet your life on. Yet that is literally what Wikileaks is suggesting that people should do.

Wikileaks sounds like something nifty, new, politically cool, and maybe even useful: a forum for “untraceable mass document leaking and analysis” that’s endorsed by Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame. However, mail and Web anonymizer services have been around for a while, and plugging them into a public wiki doesn’t seem that innovative. The claimed innovation, however, is in the political purpose: people who live in countries with oppressive regimes (China is mentioned as an example) are encouraged to post documentation of abuses and other politically sensitive information that formerly was “costly in terms of human life” but now can be leaked with safety. That’s my summary of Wikileaks, anyhow, and thanks to the BBC’s Bill Thompson a for writing a more in-depth article.

So maybe not so technically innovative, but perhaps an example real world value created by Internet related technology? No. Emphatically, no. As with every claim of benefit from security/privacy/safety technology, tradeoffs are shifted, risks are reduced, but never eliminated. There is no guarantee of “forward secrecy,” that is, the claim that an encrypted secret (your identity in this case) remain just as secret years from now as today. Anyone who claims to guarantee Internet anonymity is either deceptive or ignorant, regardless of what anonymizer software they use to implement whatever clever protocol using whatever kind of encryption. Here are some sad facts. All cryptosystems have shown as decreasing in practical strength over time as mathematicians whittle at them. All crypto protocol implementations have had weakness discovered over time. And most important, all software has bugs. In fact, crypto-related software is notorious for how a subtle error can bring down the whole house of cards.

Imagine you’re a prospective whistle-blower in an oppressive environment, worried that your communication is monitored, and that speaking out could cause retaliation, even if discovered years from now. If you’re considering Wikileaks, the following questions are vital, literally. How likely is it that years from now my recorded anonymous message turns out to be crackable, because of new discovery of weakness in crypto, or protocol, or software? How likely is Wikileaks software to be bug free? Why would I trust the strength of Wikileaks software? The history of software, and of crypto, and of, well, of history – not encouraging. Boiled down even further:
Q: Is it secret? is it safe?
A: Don’t bet your life on it!

Vista: More Security Widgets, More Security Value?

As part of Microsoft’s customer awareness campaign for Windows Vista, the latest issue of the Microsoft Security for Home Computer Users Newsletter has a column about “five security features in Windows Vista that might just surprise you.” These features are actually interesting, but the article begs a question about the value of more security features that are part of the operating system or application software like browsers and mailers. Compare the user-empowering tone of that article with another article in the latest issue of the parallel newsletter for IT folks, Microsoft Security Newsletter that explains the prevalence of botnets and “rootkits on the rise.”

Taken together, I see valiant efforts at adding more security mechanisms that could be managed by home users, despite the lamentable fact that these new mechanisms are just a liable as the older one to be subverted by malware that modify the OS in order to hide itself (rootkits) and its activity (bots participating in botnets).

I see real innovation in better empowering home users to manage their own security mechanisms, but even assuming that most people did manage security as suggested, is there real value these new features? Well, yes, insofar as some actual attacks are foiled more often because of easier-to-manage security features, especially those that help users avoid participation in phishing, for example. But, no, insofar as these new mechanisms don’t really amplify the OS’s ability to prevent itself being compromised.

What is the value problem here? And where would some real value lie? As is often the value, the value problem it is a disconnect on assumptions. One the one hand, we’d like OSs (all of them! Windows, Linux, etc.) to better protect themselves, and these new features don’t help at all there. On the other hand, the creditable work done on these features assumes an intrinsic value on new features that can do new protection in the cases where the OS hasn’t already been compromised.

I think that this assumptions disconnect can actually be re-connected, but I’ll save that idea for another day and another recent development that might help make that connection.

What this blog is about

The thorny relationship between innovation and value – that’s one of the main themes that you’ll see in this blog. Here’s why:

Innovation only sometimes results in creation of value – an adage nowhere more true than in computing technology, where the pace and range of innovation continues to grow. Yet we’ve all seen many excellent technical developments that fail to deliver sufficient value to a large enough number of people to have significant impact. And let’s not confuse this with commercial success or lack thereof – there are plenty examples of commercial successes that are based on some important innovation, and yet are not high in value. (Some of which you’ll see highlighted here.)

In fact, value is a notoriously slippery idea, so (at least in this blog) perhaps the best way to discover its meaning, and its connection to innovation, is by taking a focused look at specific cases.

Another key theme is where security gets in the mix of innovation and value. I’ve been engaged in a variety of types of technical security endeavors off and on in my checkered past, and perhaps that accounts for why security, innovation, and value comprise a fascinating topic for me. Certainly I’ve seen a lot of cool security technology prove to have little practical benefit.

So, some (not all) of the examples of innovation and value (or lack thereof) will be either about innovation in security itself, or – more interesting to me as time goes by – innovations that when applied turn out to significantly effect the way that a valuable asset is used. Often it just isn’t clear at the outset how applying a technical innovation affects an asset’s risks of security, integrity, privacy, or the trust that underpins these three.

Last but not least, and particularly were security is involved – hype. Just about every technical innovation you hear about claims to be valuable, and often some simple claims are obscured by claims full of hyperbole, exaggeration, jargon, of just plain poor communication. So a certain amount if cut-through-the hype is needed, and you’ll find that here too. So …

… visit here often, for view on the ongoing stream of tech innovation, and de-mystification of claims of new value and/or security.