Federal Information Processing Standard 140-1 stipulates requirements for the cryptographic processing of sensitive but unclassified data. More details at http://csrc.nist.gov/fips/fips1401.htm In EI #27, April 1998, we reported that FIPS 140-1 became mandatory on June 30 and that it was meeting resistance in the US DoD in part because Microsoft products are not currently compliant. The following was sent to us as an update by Patrick Arnold of Microsoft .
"Microsoft Corporation is committed to delivering a software-based cryptographic module certified by NIST as FIPS 140-1 compliant. This cryptographic module will be comprised of the Microsoft CryptoAPI and a cryptographic service provider (CSP) supporting DSS/DSA, DES, and SHA-1 at a minimum. As a result of the open CryptoAPI architecture, customers and all independent software vendors (ISVs) alike will realize benefit from Microsoft's FIPS 140-1 evaluation. ISVs who develop to the Microsoft CryptoAPI will have the option to leverage FIPS 140-1 compliant cryptography in their applications.
Microsoft is scheduled to enter the validation process with one of the National Institute of Technology's (NIST) approved testing and evaluation labs within the next four months. This commitment from Microsoft clearly enables a FIPS 140-1 migration path for our customers who wish to implement commercial Microsoft Internet technologies today."
"The Common Criteria Project sponsoring organizations (governments of
Canada, France, Germany, Netherlands, United Kingdom, and United
States) have just completed the Common Criteria for IT Security
Evaluation (CC) version 2.0, and it is now ready for full use. This
version supersedes the trial-use version 1.0, which was published in
January 1996 primarily for the purpose of gaining field experience via
application and secondarily for in-depth public review. The very large
number of technical revisions and additions that were made via that
process have resulted in a much improved version 2.0 document that is
substantially different from the older version in numerous respects.
"The CC Project has a cooperative working relationship with ISO JTC1
SC27 in developing an International Standard IT security criteria based
on the CC. The Final Committee Draft (FCD) International Standard now
being balloted within ISO is identical in content to the CC version
2.0. It is anticipated that the CC will be published as International
Standard 15408 by the Spring of 1999.
"CC version 2.0 is initially available for downloading in both Acrobat
PDF and FrameMaker5 formats at the NIST CC website
(http://csrc.nist.gov/cc). It will subsequently be made widely
available from the CC Project Organizations in the various countries,
in paper and CD-ROM formats, along with an HTML version.
"A revised draft of the companion document, "Guide for Production of
Protection Profiles and Security Targets" (3/98), being developed by
ISO is also available via the NIST website.
"For further information on the Common Criteria, see the website or
contact: Gene Troy, NIST, at criteria@nist.gov."
On May 7, 1998, Purdue University unveiled a new University Center
devoted to education and research into protection of critical
information resources: CERIAS. The Purdue CERIAS (pronounced
"serious") is the: Center for Education and Research in
Information Assurance and Security. See
http://www.cerias.purdue.edu/
for more details.
The mission of the CERIAS is to provide innovation and leadership in
technology for the protection of information and information
resources, and in the development and enhancement of expertise in
information assurance and security.
The Center is multidisciplinary in nature and will address the
problems of information protection from a variety of different
perspectives.
More information on the CERIAS is available at the Center
WWW site:
As noted above under LISTWATCH the SKIPJACK algorithm of Clipper fame,
along with the associated Key Exchange Algorithm were recently
declassified. Within a week a group of researchers at the Technion
(Eli Biham, Alex Biryukov, Orr Dunkelman, Eran Richardson) together
with Adi Shamir of the Weizmann Institute announced some cryptanalytic
results.
"The main result is an attack on a variant, which we call SkipJack-3XOR
(SkipJack minus 3 XORs). The only difference between SkipJack and
SkipJack-3XOR is the removal of 3 out of the 320 XOR operations. The
attack uses the ciphertexts derived from about 500 plaintexts which are
identical except for the second 16 bit word. Its total running time is
equivalent to about one million SkipJack encryptions, which can be
carried out in seconds on a personal computer."
More details can be found at
http://www.cs.technion.ac.il/~biham/Reports/SkipJack/.
Submission period for AES the Advanced Encryption Standard closed on
June 19th. AES is more or less the successor of DES. Candidate
algorithms that meet the official criteria for submission have not been
announced. However, ten candidates are listed on the AES Web page
www.ii.uib.no/~larsr/aes.html hosted by Lars Knudsen and Vincent
Rijmen, along with pointers to public cryptanalytic results. The list
of submitters contains most of the most prominent names in block cipher
design. The official AES Web page at NIST www.nist.gov/aes lists
additional information including registration information about the
first AES Candidate Conference to be held this August.
6/18/98 - Datafellows reported a Word macro virus (WM/PolyPoster)
that may, if it takes hold on a machine, post infected versions of
documents it finds there to certain heavily-used newsgroups. PolyPoster
is probably not in the wild at present, and would require particular
combinations of software to deliver its payload. Nevertheless, it is in
line with a recent trend towards malicious software attempting to trawl
for information (documents, IP numbers, passwords) rather than just
replicating and damaging data. For more information see
http://www.DataFellows.com/news/pr/eng/fsav/19980618.htm
The Washington Post reports (7/12/98) that a new industry coalition
consisting of such companies as Sun Microsystems Inc., Novell
Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co. and Network Associates plans to unveil a plan it
hopes will persuade the U.S. government to dramatically loosen export
restrictions on sophisticated data-scrambling technology. Government
officials say they are cautiously optimistic that the coalition's approach,
dubbed the "private doorbell," will win their approval. The full Washington
Post story can be found at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1998-07/12/194l-071298-idx.html
A plain ascii reproduction of the story can also be found at
http://www.jya.com/giant-ploy.htm
Cisco Systems Inc., which according to the Post article heads the
industry coalition, has a white paper on the approach that can be found at
http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/146/july98/2.html.
Common Criteria Full-use Version 2.0 Now Completed.
contributed by Gene Troy
Purdue CERIAS Opens
US Government Announces Comprehensive Privacy Plan
On May 14, the Vice President announced a comprehensive privacy
action plan to give people more control over their personal
information. In addition to legislative plans and the intention to hold
a privacy summit, there is also a Web site that allows consumers to opt
out of sharing of their personal information by companies and states.
http://www.ftc.gov/privacy/index.html White House press release at
http://www.whitehouse.gov/WH/Work/051498.html
Controversial Intellectual Property Law Headed Towards Enactment:
Independent Security Analysis of Software to be Criminal in US?
Legislation to implement the World Intellectual Property Organization
(WIPO) copyright treaty has already passed the US Senate and, as of
this writing, is headed for passage by the House of Representatives.
President Clinton has indicated that he will sign the legislation. One
purpose of the treaty is to prevent people from disabling copyright
protection in software and electronic media. Current versions of the
legislation are controversial because they appear to make it a criminal
offense for anyone not authorized by the copyright owner to, e.g., test
the security mechanisms in software to determine if they are adequate
for an intended application. Bruce Schneier of Counterpane Systems
noted that this legislation "is going to criminalize my profession."
While Gene Spafford of Purdue noted that "Products such as the ISS
scanner, SATAN, SAINT, and the like may no longer be legal to develop,
sell or distribute (or use). Firewalls will need to be "dumbed down"
and not allowed to block or proxy traffic. Anti-virus researchers may
be arrested for disassembling new viruses. Penetration testing would
be illegal. Security testing of products you want to purchase or
deploy might be a felony."
Alternative legislation more favored by those who oppose the current
bills has been proposed before the House with many cosponsors.
Text of the current bills (S 2037 and HR 2281)
along with their status and references to them in the Congressional
Record may be found at http://thomas.loc.gov/
Also found their is the alternative (HR 3048).
Some side-by-side comparisons of the various bills (which strongly
favor the alternative) can be found at http://www.dfc.org
SKIPJACK and KEA declassified, Biham et al. Announce Cryptanalysis
AES Submissions All In
DataFellows Reports On Word Macro Virus
Industry coalition pushes for new Encryption policy