ASecuritySite Podcast

This is Day 0 of a new world of cybersecurity. Everything changes from here. There will be a time before Generative AI (GenAI) in cybersecurity and a time after it. Over the last two years, GenAI has come on leaps and bounds, and where it once suffered from hallucinations , took racist and bigoted approaches, and often was over-assertive, within ChatGPT 4.5, we see the rise of a friendly and sligh...

This seminar series runs for students on the Applied Cryptography and Trust module, but invites guests from students from across the university. Martin is one of the co-creators of public key encryption, and worked alongside Whitfield Diffie in the creation of the widely used Diffie-Hellman method. In 2015, he was presented with the ACM Turing Award (the equivalent of a Nobel Prize in Computer Sci...

Vincent Rijmen is one of the co-creators of the NIST-defined AES standard (also known as Rijndael). He also co-designed the WHIRLPOOL hashing method, along with designing other block ciphers, such as Square and SHARK. In 2002, Vincent was included in the Top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35, and, along with Joan Daemen, was awarded the RSA Award for Excellence in Mathematics. He rec...

Whitfield Diffie is one of the greatest Computer Scientists ever. He - along with Marty Hellman - was one of the first to propose the usage of public key encryption and co-created the Diffie-Hellman (DH) key exchange method. Overall, the Diffie-Hellman method is still used in virtually every Web connection on the Internet, and has changed from using discrete log methods to elliptic curve methods....

I do what I do because of one company … IBM. Why? Because in the 1970s, I got into computers, with a ZX81 (1KB of RAM) and a Dragon 32 (32 KB of RAM). They were very much home computers, and where you would rush out and buy the latest computer magazine, and then spend a happy evening entering some BASIC code that made a cursor move across the screen using the IJLM keys. If you were very lucky you...

I have been lucky enough to speak to some of the most amazing people who have built the core of security on the Internet, and a person near the top of my list is … Torben P. Pedersen .  The Pedersen Commitment So how do we create a world where we can store our secrets in a trusted and then reveal them when required? Let's say I predict the outcome of an election, but I don't want to reveal my pred...

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_kMmbvu9VM

There short podcast on Just Magic, Be A Teacher, And The King and Queen of Cybersecurity Magic: https://medium.com/asecuritysite-when-bob-met-alice/magic-from-heaven-to-earth-1837a1a1206e The Silly World of Cybersecurity https://medium.com/asecuritysite-when-bob-met-alice/the-silly-world-of-cybersecurity-a1143b90d3f0 Giving Back What Others Have Given You … https://medium.com/asecuritysite-when-bo...

This seminar series runs for students in the Applied Cryptography and Trust module but invites guests from students from across the university. This seminar series runs for students on the Applied Cryptography and Trust module but invites guests from students from across the university. He has created a wide range of cryptographic methods, including Skein (hash function), Helix (stream cipher), Fo...

I'm going to show a full timeline of a Cyber Crime to show the steps that a scammer will take in order to gain funds from their target. Overall I'm interested in seeing how a scamming crime evolves to the point of profit for the scammer. https://medium.com/asecuritysite-when-bob-met-alice/a-full-diary-of-a-cyber-crime-from-phishing-to-profit-23ab53f5f58b

I'm going to show a full timeline of a Cyber Crime to show the steps that a scammer will take in order to gain funds from their target. Overall, I'm interested in seeing how a scamming crime evolves to the point of profit for the scammer.   https://medium.com/asecuritysite-when-bob-met-alice/a-full-diary-of-a-cyber-crime-from-phishing-to-profit-23ab53f5f58b  

Professor Peter Andras is the Dean of the School of Computing, Engineering & the Built Environment. Previously, Peter was the Head of the School of Computing and Mathematics (2017 – 2021) and Professor of Computer Science and Informatics at Keele University from 2014 – 2021. Prior to this he worked at Newcastle University in the School of Computing (2002 – 2014) and the Department of Psychology (2...

And, so, if you could pick one or two people who have contributed most to our online security, who would it be? Ron Rivest? Shafi Goldwasser? Ralph Merkle? Marty Hellman? Whitfield Diffie? Neal Koblitz? Well, in terms of the number of data bytes protected, that prize is likely to go to Joan Daemen and Vincent Rijmen, and who created the Rijndael method that became standardized by NIST as AES (Adva...

In research, the publishing of high-quality papers is often critical for the development of a research career: "I am an academic. It's publish or perish." Daniel J Bernstien. But often we measure the work in terms of quality rather than quantity. One high-quality research paper is probably worth more than the millions of papers published in predatory journals. A great researcher should be able to...

And, so, we are moving into one of the greatest changes that we ever see on the Internet, and where we will translate from our existing public key infrastructures towards Post Quantum Cryptography (PQC) methods. At the present time, NIST has approved one key exchange/public key encryption method (Kyber) and three digital signature methods (Dilithium, Falcon and SPHINCS+). The focus will now be on...

Please excuse me for using IBM in the title — I have the greatest of respect for a company that has continued to lead and innovate over the past six decades (and who have existed for over a century). The point of this article is to showcase where you, your team or your company have a deep passion for doing something great. For this, we go back to the roots of one of the greatest inventions in the...

In cybersecurity, the teaching of Cloud security is often weak. So, here are my Top 100 things about encryption in the Cloud. I've focused on AWS, but Azure is likely to also be applicable. Keys are created in the AWS KMS (Key Management Store). In Azure, this is named KeyVault . The cost of using a key in KMS is around $1/month (prorated hourly). When a key is disabled, it is not charged. With AW...

Well, here are a few tips for PhD students and ECR (Early Career Researchers): Enjoy doing research. It is fun and one of the few times in your career when it is solely your work. To do a PhD is a privilege and not a chore. You will likely look back on it as one of the most useful things you did in your whole career. You will always hit a dip in your research . Know when that is happening, and fin...

Here are my 100 interesting things to learn about cryptography: For a 128-bit encryption key, there are 340 billion billion billion billion possible keys. [Calc: 2**128/(1e9**4)] For a 256-bit encryption key, there are 115,792 billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion possible keys. [Calc: 2**256/(1e9**8)] To crack a 128-bit encryption with brute force using a cracker running...

Interview here:   https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/talking-with-tech-leaders/id1533642699 https://open.spotify.com/episode/11PmWm0mlGQNAhVn8wYnIn

Your organisation needs a vision. Without it, you will never be great. You will never advance. You will keep doing the same old things and without any real purpose. A vision gives you a purpose and a focus. But, it needs to have a plan which takes you there. But, without it, how can you ever plan? For any great organisation, you start with a vision. So, what about a vision for the NHS? I appreciat...

I remember attending a talk many years ago, and the presenter said, "I've got this amazing tool called Lotus 123", and he gave a practical demo of doing some calculations. People in the audience were stunned by the simplicity of its operation. It was the birth of the thing that drives many businesses … spreadsheets. They are just so simple to use, and we all love them. And so, in the PSNI (Police...

So, here's my Top 100 snippets of knowledge for blockchain: Blockchains use public key methods to integrate digital trust. Bob signs for a transaction with his private key, and Alice proves this with Bob's public key. The first usable public key method was RSA — and created by Rivest, Shamir and Adleman. It was first published in 1979 and defined in the RSA patent entitled "Cryptographic Communica...

Blog: here . You can just imagine the movie trailer … "Your worst enemy has taken over all your flights, and you cannot remove them from your network. They demand a $1 billion ransom, or else they will bring every flight down. Bob accidentally removes one of the controllers — you now only have 25 minutes to save the lives of those in the air!" We have all seen movies with a dead man switch — and w...

Kerckhoff's principle defines that "a Cryptographic system should be designed to be secure, even if all its details, except for the key, are publicly known", but there aren't too many other rules defined. So here are my 100 Basic Rules of Cryptography (and Secure Programming). First, my Top 10: Cryptography is both an art and a science. Cryptography needs to be both theoretical and practical — one...