Industry Consortium Rivalry over Crypto Standards
The idea of an industry-wide common cryptography standard is certainly welcome. But self-interest usually precedes usability, so two industry consortiums are now vying over which standards to adopt, one on the side of Sun and the other leaning toward IBM/HP. Then there is an additional player in the Trusted Computing Group.
System admins deploying cryptography are generally annoyed by the multiplicity of formats with which applications employ keys, security provisions, certificates and other encryption methods. The format mess makes it hard to exchange encrypted material among applications in a heterogeneous landscape. Thus it can be easily comprehended that a group of vendors that include HP, IBM, Brocade, EMC, LSI, Seagate and Thales would want to recommend the KMIP standard to the OASIS standards body for the open global information market.
The Key Management Interoperability Protocol (KMIP) is designed to standardise cryptography among laptops and storage devices by use of a key management server. The HP/IBM-centric consortium put quite a bit of work into this protocol over the last 14 months and has issued an over 100-page KMIP draft document. According to Mark Schiller, director of HP's security office, "More than 20 experienced collaborators from the partner companies have worked on a proof-of-concept of the standard." Questioned further on this point by Linux Magazine Online, Schiller wasn't specific about whether the partners will publish the reference implementations, libraries or applications. The consortium apparently chose OASIS as a standards body because it would allow their development work to be shared free with other companies. For Schiller, OASIS serves to "increase the trust in security issues." Asked why the group didn't engage the IETF in the process, he evaded the question.
In the spirit of the Tanenbaum bromide that the good thing about standards is that there are so many of them, Sun Microsystems has now offered direct access to its own cryptology recommendation. Naturally Sun is also promoting a vendor-independent, generic and open source approach. Its answer is the Crypto KMS Agent Toolkit under a BSD license that, unfortunately, can only be compiled with Sun Studio 12. According to Jason Schaffer, senior director of storage product management at Sun, "Open Storage solutions allows customers to break free from the chains of proprietary hardware... [in this] highly fragmented encryption market." The Sun solution involves "a number of additional partners" such as EMC's RSA Security division proposing a unified standard to the IEEE 1619.3 Working Group.
But the two competing standards groups are still not cooperating. In fact, a ChannelWeb article says that they're unprepared to do so. Both entities say alternately that each is welcome to participate in each other's work.
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
TUXEDO Computers Unveils Linux Laptop Featuring AMD Ryzen CPU
This latest release is the first laptop to include the new CPU from Ryzen and Linux preinstalled.
-
XZ Gets the All-Clear
The back door xz vulnerability has been officially reverted for Fedora 40 and versions 38 and 39 were never affected.
-
Canonical Collaborates with Qualcomm on New Venture
This new joint effort is geared toward bringing Ubuntu and Ubuntu Core to Qualcomm-powered devices.
-
Kodi 21.0 Open-Source Entertainment Hub Released
After a year of development, the award-winning Kodi cross-platform, media center software is now available with many new additions and improvements.
-
Linux Usage Increases in Two Key Areas
If market share is your thing, you'll be happy to know that Linux is on the rise in two areas that, if they keep climbing, could have serious meaning for Linux's future.
-
Vulnerability Discovered in xz Libraries
An urgent alert for Fedora 40 has been posted and users should pay attention.
-
Canonical Bumps LTS Support to 12 years
If you're worried that your Ubuntu LTS release won't be supported long enough to last, Canonical has a surprise for you in the form of 12 years of security coverage.
-
Fedora 40 Beta Released Soon
With the official release of Fedora 40 coming in April, it's almost time to download the beta and see what's new.
-
New Pentesting Distribution to Compete with Kali Linux
SnoopGod is now available for your testing needs
-
Juno Computers Launches Another Linux Laptop
If you're looking for a powerhouse laptop that runs Ubuntu, the Juno Computers Neptune 17 v6 should be on your radar.