Confidentiality is key in any profession, especially as it related to client-consultant relationships. I’m hard pressed to find confidentiality foregrounded in architectural codes of practice, but it is crucial in law and financial services. The Handbook of the Financial Conduct Authority, for example, states that a financial advisor (a “skilled person”) “may not pass on…More
Tag Archives: security
Failure for sale
Things that don’t function properly are valuable commodities if their failure offers advantage for someone. In fact, it’s information about that failure that’s the commodity. Consider an urban example. You see that your neighbours have left one of their windows unlatched as they are about to move out for the weekend. So, you’ve detected a…More
An anti-hacker puzzle
Following on from my previous post … Here’s a simple puzzle challenge. The SHA256 hashing algorithm (see earlier post: Immutable data) converts any string of text (integers or letters) into a (near) unique 64 character long string of numbers and letters. Using this algorithm the string “301253” (someone’s birthdate) translates to the string of characters…More
Why hackers have to work hard
A 4 digit mechanical combination lock is designed so that a person trying to break into your locker (a padlock hacker) would have to try on average 5,000 combinations (104/2). That’s about 2-5 hours work, which is a big investment in time, and before the hacker exhausts all iterations he or she may well be…More
Mastering the universe
The Guardian newspaper recently ran a cover story on GCHQ’s top-secret project Mastering the Internet. According to a helpful summary from wired.co.uk, it seems that the UK and US intelligence services have invoked a legal workaround that avoids domestic restrictions on intelligence gathering. The NSA in the USA can check up on UK citizens and GCHQ…More