Posts Tagged: "encryption"

One of the first and most widely-used public key systems for cryptography is known as RSA cryptography, named for the trio of inventors who developed the system at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the late 1970s: Ronald Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman. These three inventors have each been inducted as part of the 2018 class of the National Inventors Hall of Fame and this Thursday, September 20th, marks the 35th anniversary of the issue of the seminal patent in the field of RSA cryptography. With this important date upon us, we return to our Evolution of Technology series to explore the development of this encryption system which has been incorporated as a fundamental aspect of many transaction systems and secure communications protocols.

To get the case off the ground, the court will decide whether Equifax can be sued in the first place – it’s tricky, because different federal circuits disagree about when this can happen. So, courts in Delaware, Illinois and Washington DC (for example) would allow the plaintiffs to proceed merely because their data is at risk after a hack. This is pretty easy to show. On the other hand though, New York, Conneticut and North Carolina would need to see not just a leak, but that the leaked data has actually been misused afterwards. Equifax HQ is in Atlanta, the 11th circuit. Although those courts have a history of recognising that difficulty (and so supporting data victim lawsuits), it hasn’t yet come down firmly on the question of risk vs misuse.

Increasingly, bitcoin and related cryptocurrencies are becoming the choice for most financial transactions within the nascent marijuana industry as the sector increases in value. North American marijuana sales reached $6.7 billion during 2016 and were expected to rise up to $20.2 billion annually by the year 2021… The USPTO published 390 patent applications related to blockchain tech, the underlying distributed ledger technology supporting bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, between January and July of this year. That represented a 90 percent increase over the number of blockchain-related patent applications published during the same period in 2016.

High value information—identified as trade secrets, IP mappings, product designs, financial data, confidential business information and similar files and documents—require an extra level of protection because of their value to cybercriminals and malicious insiders. The last thing an organization wants to do is make the theft of high value information easier by leaving vulnerability gaps in security practices. A malicious actor will exploit those each and every time.

In the world of messaging services, the cross-platform mobile messaging app WhatsApp enjoys the enviable position of being the world’s most popular messaging service, eclipsing one billion monthly active users as of this February. Owned by Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB), WhatsApp’s user base even outpaces that of Facebook’s flagship messaging service Messenger. Over on Capitol Hill, WhatsApp’s encrypted messaging services has been drawing strong language from those perceiving the technology as a possible security threat.

Much of the data security world has been abuzz since a blog post at the digital privacy website DataBreaches.net reported the disconcerting news that the personal information of 191 million voters participating in U.S. elections going back to the year 2000 was made available on the Internet by a party who is yet unknown. These records include voter information which is requested at the time of registration, which in many cases includes home addresses, date of birth, telephone number and state voter identification. Making these voter records available online violates confidentiality restrictions on accessing records put in place by California and other states.

Chinese legislators have attempted to enact anti-terror legislation purportedly designed to protect Chinese citizens against terrorist threats. In late December, China passed a law requiring both telecommunications and Internet companies operating in the country to provide decryption, technical interfaces and other assistance to public and state security organizations to conduct investigations of potential terrorist activities. The tech sector has misgivings about Chinese regulations that would force the handing over of sensitive data. Imagine a leak of encryption keys leading Chinese hackers to degrade performance of a foreign tech provider, all in the name of promoting indigenous innovation. That’s a pretty extreme scenario, but one that’s not completely unimaginable considering recent cybersecurity headlines.

Safe harbor in the world of international digital data transfer has been a major topic of discussion in the tech world in recent weeks. Since 1998, data transferred from European citizens to American shores by U.S. tech companies have been regulated by the U.S.- EU safe harbor agreement. Under these rules, American companies have been able to make international data transfers if they can self-certify that they can keep the personal data of European citizens secure to the privacy standards of the European Union, which operates a much different data security regime than is implemented in the United States. These rules have come under the crosshairs of a recent ruling by the European Court of Justice, the EU’s highest court, which has invalidated the safe harbor agreement in light of revelations made by Edward Snowden on the data surveillance tactics of America’s National Security Agency (NSA).

The research and development activities at Amazon have been strong in recent years and in 2014, the company placed 59th among all companies earning patents from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, receiving 741 in that year; this was nearly 40 percent greater than the number of U.S. patents earned by Amazon in the previous year. During the third quarter of 2015, Amazon earned 321 U.S. patents, a quarterly pace of innovation that would far outstrip its 2014 totals… Amazon has also jumped into the world of autonomous vehicle R&D with the filing of U.S. Patent Application No. 20150277440, entitled Sense and Avoid for Automated Mobile Vehicles. This system, which could be incorporated on air, water or ground-based vehicles, is meant to keep unmanned vehicles from colliding with each other, a technology which has been heavily sought by the drone community in response to concerns by federal regulators.

It is already a criminal act in the United States to intercept and/or decode an encrypted satellite signal. See 18 U.S.C. §2511. Many in the United States may not realize that similar provisions criminalizing interception of an encrypted program-carrying satellite signal are included in Free Trade Agreements already concluded by the U.S., including the North American Free Trade Agreement. With Article QQ.H.9, one might be tempted to read Paragraph 1 as permitting the possession and use of a device which can receive and de-crypt a program-carrying satellite signal (without authorization of the signal’s lawful distributor), although any of the nefarious activities enumerated in Paragraph 1(a) would be criminal. However, Footnote 153 makes clear that receipt and use, or receipt and decoding of the signal are also distinct, criminal activities.

The patent portfolio discloses systems and methods involving a secure credit card with onboard biometric fingerprint capabilities, RFID, and display that can be powered either by ambient light, backlight from a point-of-sale terminal or mobile device, RFID coupling, smart IC contact, or battery. Card information is transmitted to the terminal and receives a secure validation code after which some combination of a card validation and/or biometric-based user validation code are generated and transmitted back to the point of validation. By decoupling authorization of the fingerprint image and the user’s personal information, transmission and data vulnerabilities within the existing payment card system are addressed while consumer behavior remains unchanged.

On Tuesday, February 12, the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office issued 27 patents to electronics manufacturer Apple Inc., including two design patents and a couple of patents related to improvements in wireless connectivity. Apple’s patent protections also extend into the data encryption world this week, as the hardware developer is awarded a patent for a new method of hash data security based on billiards.