by Ryan | 20th November 2007

According to a warning from cryptographer Adi Shamir, the man behind the “S” in the widely used RSA encyrption algorithm, increasingly sophisticated computer chips could possibly lead to undetected bugs in calculations. This increases the risk that these bugs could be used to crack public key encryption algorithms. Not just PCs could be affected but cellphones and any other device with a computer chip could as well. The real danger is that once a vulnerability is found millions of PCs could be attacked simultaneously. This is not a new phenomenon, as other calculation bugs have been discovered, such as, Pentium’s FDIV division bug and a recent multiplication error in Microsoft Excel.

Source: Information Week
Photo: Flickr

by Ryan | 20th November 2007

According to a warning from cryptographer Adi Shamir, the man behind the “S” in the widely used RSA encyrption algorithm, increasingly sophisticated computer chips could possibly lead to undetected bugs in calculations. This increases the risk that these bugs could be used to crack public key encryption algorithms. Not just PCs could be affected but cellphones and any other device with a computer chip could as well. The real danger is that once a vulnerability is found millions of PCs could be attacked simultaneously. This is not a new phenomenon, as other calculation bugs have been discovered, such as, Pentium’s FDIV division bug and a recent multiplication error in Microsoft Excel.

Source: Information Week
Photo: Flickr