Irreal

TidBITS has a great post on how Apple secures the iCloud keychain. An Apple device will remember passwords to sites you visit, WiFi nodes you join, and many other things. If you don’t do anything special, these credentials will be stored only on your local device. But it is also possible to sync them across all you Apple devices or even back them up on iCloud.

If you’re like me, you’re paranoid about this. Why would you ever trust the crown jewels to a third party? As the TidBITS article makes clear, Apple has gone to great lengths to ensure that trusting Apple with your passwords is, in fact, safe. If Apple is doing what they claim—and as TidBITS points out they’d face serious legal liabilities otherwise—then it appears that it actually is safe to trust your credentials to them. Read the article and see if you don’t agree.

The article even tells you how to make your keychain safe from government snooping. If you believe your end device is secure, then you can probably depend on Apple to keep your passwords safe. If, like most people, you’re off the NSA radar, then your concern is a criminal getting your credentials. Absent physical access to your device, Apple’s security should keep you safe. They’ve done a really good job securing your information and even, if you don’t think they’re in cahoots with the NSA, keeping it safe from government snooping.

Not all Irreal readers are Apple users, of course, but if you are you’ll want to read this article. Whatever you think of Apple, they seem to have this particular area under control. Again, read the article and see if you don’t agree.

Irreal readers are doubtless familiar with the broad outlines of the NSA’s insertion of a backdoor into the NIST Special Publication 800-90A elliptic curve random bit generator but may be unfamiliar about what was actually involved. Now Mother Jones has an excellent article about mathematician Edward Frenkel. The article is mostly about the beauty of Mathematics and how the teaching of it is terrible. I like that, of course, but the thing that will be interesting to most of you is a video interview with Numberphile in which Frenkel discusses the Dual_EC_DRBG algorithm.

He gives a simple and very accessible explanation of modular arithmetic, elliptic curves, how the Dual_EC_DRBG algorithm works, and how the NSA was able to insert the backdoor by the judicious choice of some parameters. It’s an amazing explanation because while Frenkel keeps the explanation well within the capabilities of a high school algebra student, he nevertheless gives a mathematically accurate description of what’s going on. If you have the slightest interest in the elliptic curve DRBG and the how it can be subverted, you’ll enjoy this video. It’s only about 11 minutes so you can enjoy it with your morning coffee.

Update: Frenkel talks further about the deplorable state of Mathematics education in this LA Times story.