News

• Crypto guru Whit Diffie takes ICANN security job

  Six months after leaving his job at Sun Microsystems noted cryptographer Whitfield 'Whit' Diffie has landed a new gig, this time as a security adviser to the corporation that manages the Internet.

• APRA to review business processes and IT systems

  The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) will undergo a strategic review of its business processes and IT systems across its five business divisions. The review is being done as part of a the organisation’s strategic plan set out in 2008 and will look at the integration across APRA’s risk rating, activities and issues management, and periphery systems.

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  Centrelink issues $500k unbreakable code for free

  Centrelink will release its $560,000 smart card identification protocol for free in an attempt to buy-back security systems based on the technology.

• VeriSign buys Certicom after RIM withdraws bid

  VeriSign said it plans to buy Certicom, just three days after Research In Motion's hostile bid for the security company unraveled.

• Amateurs and pros vie to build new crypto standard

  Fifteen-year-old Peter Schmidt-Nielsen spent only a month working on his submission, but he thinks he's come up with something "unusual and new." Never mind that he's up against some of the most famous cryptographers in the world.

• New attack against multiple encryption functions

  Unless you're a dyed in the wool cryptographic geek you probably didn't know that there was a Crypto conference, or even a chain of worldwide crypto conferences that take place each year. Fortunately, for the most of us that aren't crypto geeks there are a handful of very highly skilled people who are; they can take the highly theoretical and complex mathematical proofs and arguments that make up most of modern cryptographic and cryptanalytic research and put it into plain language.