wrosecrans skreiv:
> Unfortunately, Omegan SIGINT detected the wireless data transfer,
> realize it includes classified data and shoot him out of the sky,
> knowing he is a spy.
Why does "milspec" equipment not come with basic, 1980ies-technology
encryption then ?
> At very least, I'd expect some sort of well defined interface ****t /
> contact point that would be used to touch two devices together long
> enough to have a user confirm a trust relation****p and to be used as a
> side channel to exchange session-specific encryption keys before the
> data is then securely transmitted wirelessly. I dunno why this isn't
> common in the real world yet.
Yes. But that's only needed once. When you pair up two devices, they
exchange their public keys. Thereafter they're able to securely
recognize eachothers and communicate with eachother with no new pairing.
So the spy has probably paired his PDA with his ****pboard-computer ages
ago.
Furthermore, with everywhere wireless networking, why does the thing
sync to the ****pboard computer only once he enters the ****p ? That's a
huge risk.
More likely, the moment the spy is no longer in a compromising position,
the pda sends an encrypted message to the homebase (or indirectly; to
some entity controlled by the homebase), that way the window for
catching him is much smaller than it would otherwise be.
This is -ALREADY- the case: If you're a spy smuggling secret information
out of a country it is MUCH safer and more effective to send an
encrypted message to some random email-address from within the country
than it is to put the secret on some gadget and attempt to physically
trans****t it out. Particularily doing the latter in a _unencrypted_
format would be insanity.
Eivind Kjørstad
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