The PhoneBoy Blog » crypto http://phoneboy.com Simplifying Network Security, Telecom, Gadgets, and More! Sun, 05 Feb 2012 00:13:02 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Check Point Abra: Your Office In Your Pocket http://phoneboy.com/3358/check-point-abra-your-office-in-your-pocket http://phoneboy.com/3358/check-point-abra-your-office-in-your-pocket#comments Sat, 13 Mar 2010 02:44:10 +0000 PhoneBoy http://phoneboy.com/?p=3358 One of the products I was most excited about finding out shortly after I joined Check Point was Abra. I’d be more excited if we were shipping the product–that is expected to happen at the end of March–but at least it’s announced so I can talk about it a bit more freely :)

The product is pretty simple: you can walk up to any computer, plug your USB stick in, and access a secure virtual environment complete with connectivity to your corporate Intranet, access to applications installed on the host computer, hardware encryption, and simple, centralized management. Abra gives you all this and more!

The technologies that are being employed here are not entirely new. What is unique is how it is all tied together. SSL VPN products (including Check Point’s own Connectra) have had the concept of a “Secure Workspace” for quite some time. When you connect to the SSL VPN gateway, you are allowed to run local applications and connect to remote resources. However, the apps operate in a kind of sandbox that restricts how you can get data into and out of the sandbox and what happens to the sandbox after the connection terminates (usually, it disappears).

Now, instead of writing the sandbox data on the local drive, move that onto a USB thumb drive that contains both hardware and software encryption. Add autorun capabilities so that when you insert the thumb drive, you are immediately prompted for authentication, taken into the secure workspace, and automatically connected to the corporate network. Meanwhile, the secure workspace and VPN settings are centrally managed using your existing Check Point Security Gateways.

I’m really excited about the future of this product! You can find out more on the Check Point Abra product pages.

Comments

  • 18 March 2010, Francisco writes: Phoneboy, I follow your posts since your days with MR @ Voxilla. I´m sure future computing will go in this direction. The PC will be in our mobiles. And mobiles will have a universal docking station. Wherever we go we'll find a screen, a keyboard, and a docking station (wired or wireless link). And our mobile with "some kind of Abra" will open up all our stuff in the cloud, with all the security issues involved.
  • 24 March 2010, Ram writes: Is this license cost involved into abra purchasing.. What are the other costs involved in this abra ?

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Fingerprint: e37ac627f3d973694c212ff9430d215a]]> http://phoneboy.com/3358/check-point-abra-your-office-in-your-pocket/feed 2 What’s With The Encryption in the iPhone 3GS? http://phoneboy.com/3137/whats-with-the-encryption-in-the-iphone-3gs http://phoneboy.com/3137/whats-with-the-encryption-in-the-iphone-3gs#comments Sat, 04 Jul 2009 02:32:15 +0000 PhoneBoy http://phoneboy.com/?p=3137 iphone-encryption

To the right, you can see the small blurb that exists on Apple’s website about the built-in encryption feature on the iPhone 3GS. Wanting to find out more, I of course tried searching Apple’s website. There’s not much about it other than it’s there.

I asked some iPhone developers about this feature. In short, there isn’t much to the feature. It is transparent, always happening, and not controllable by any APIs. It can’t be turned off, it can’t be turned on. It’s always happening, always there.

On one hand, I like the simplicity and transparency of the feature. I like that it is not possible to programatically affect the encryption in any way. However, it bothers me that there isn’t a lot of details about the encryption on the website. What kind of encryption is being done? How long is the encryption key? How often is the encryption key changed? What is being done to protect the encryption key from being read either programatically or by hardware hacking methods? Does the “remote wipe” function simply cause the encryption key to be forgotten, rending the device memory complete gibberish? Is the remote wipe function controllable from ActiveSync?

Answers to these kinds of questions would undoubtedly make it easier for the iPhone 3GS to be accepted into enterprise environments. They could know, with a fair degree of certainty, that these devices have secure, encrypted storage that isn’t subject to being decrypted and read in an authorized manner.

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Comments

  • 4 July 2009, Jonathan Greene writes: If you have a MobileMe account you can find your phone of lost and initiate the remote wipe. Check it out on me.com if you have an account.
  • 4 July 2009, Ollysk2 writes: I'm kind of bummed that they wouldn't extend the encryption back to the regular 3G as well. I understand that they can't with the hardware encryption, but at least some good software encryption would be nice. As for the secrecy about the encryption, that is just stupid.. Surely someone at Apple understands cryptography well enough to know that the best encryption is publicly documented encryption? (They need to go back and read the reasoning behind PGP encryption).
  • 4 July 2009, PhoneBoy writes: MobileMe doesn't work on a corporate scale. Certainly on a personal one. Apple is not known for being terribly open, Olly, so this isn't a huge shock. Software encryption slows things down a bit, which is probably why they didn't backport it to the 3G (and first-gen).
  • 7 July 2009, Eric Hanke writes: OK. You received your phone. Where are the pics and your initial comments regarding the device?
  • 7 July 2009, What’s With The Encryption in the iPhone 3GS? - Sheryl - FriendFeed writes: [...] FriendFeed Sheryl What’s With The Encryption in the iPhone 3GS? - http://phoneboy.com/3137... 12 minutes ago from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share Dameon always asks the best [...]
  • 8 July 2009, Wolverine writes: Actually, Apple has documented the security to a decent level of detail; you can read all about it here: http://images.apple.com/iphone/business/docs/iPhone_Security_Overview.pdf It doesn't answer all of PhoneBoy's questions, but it's a start...btw, they use AES 256 bit encoding.

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Fingerprint: e37ac627f3d973694c212ff9430d215a]]> http://phoneboy.com/3137/whats-with-the-encryption-in-the-iphone-3gs/feed 6 Where’d My PGP Key Go? http://phoneboy.com/2931/whered-my-pgp-key-go http://phoneboy.com/2931/whered-my-pgp-key-go#comments Wed, 11 Mar 2009 08:04:51 +0000 PhoneBoy http://phoneboy.com/?p=2931 In my books, I published the fingerprint for my PGP key. Not that I expect people to send me encrypted email that often, but I’d like to be able to cope with it in case people want to send me stuff. And, let’s face it, I don’t mind having the ability to do it.

The last time I used PGP, or more specifically GNU Privacy Guard, was actually fairly recently. I have to be able to decrypt notices from CERT and the like for work, but it’s been about 5 years since I’ve had to use my personal, non-work PGP key for anything.

So where was my PGP key?It’s not on my normal computers, seeing as it’s been almost 5 years. Fortunately, I am a packrat and saved the home directory backups from several years ago where I had my .gnupg directory, complete with my private and public keychains.

I brought them over to my Mac, installed MacGPG2, GPGTools, and GPG Keychain Access, and did some tests between my personal and work PGP setups. I was able to exchange encrypted messages back and forth. Life is good.

Meanwhile, if you’re itching to send me something you don’t want anyone to read, you can download my Public PGP key. Hopefully, I’ll be able to respond in-kind ;)

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