Subscribe

Atom feed (English only)

Atom feed – Twitter Blog/Full

E-mail:

Jethro Beekman on
Technology & Policy

Articles filed under: English

English, F-1 OPT, F-1 Visa, Immigration, Lenovo ThinkPad, Policy, Reverse Engineering, SGX, SIMD, SSH, Security, Side-channel Attacks, Technology, UEFI

On the recent side-channel attacks on Intel SGX

by Jethro Beekman – Mar 1, 2017 . Filed under: English, Technology, Security, SGX, Side-channel Attacks.

Side-channel attacks are my favorite attack in computer security because they poke giant holes in the abstraction and security models that system designers are using. When I hear of a new attack avenue in this space, my first reaction often is “wow, that is so cool” and “I didn’t even think about that.” Continue reading…Comments

New OPT STEM extension rules

by Jethro Beekman – Mar 9, 2016 . Filed under: English, Policy, Immigration, F-1 Visa, F-1 OPT.

Today, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced that the new rules regarding the “Optional Practical Training STEM extension” for international students in the U.S. on F-1 visas will be published in the Federal Register on Friday. The new rules are a result of a lawsuit against DHS that would result in an invalidation of the old rules. The new rules are “better” in some respects and “worse” in others. In this blog post I will review some of the most important changes and how they will affect international students. Continue reading…Comments

Intel has full control over SGX

by Jethro Beekman – Oct 13, 2015 . Filed under: English, Technology, Security, SGX.

Intel has full control over what software you can run in SGX. This might seem redundant: Intel makes the processor, so of course they have full control. Yet the truth is slightly more inconvenient. When Intel processors don’t run the instructions in your standard software (whether incorrectly or at all), that is a defect at best and a breach of contract at worst. Yet the SGX instruction set includes in its specification that Intel has the authority to make this go/no-go decision. Continue reading…Comments

SGX Hardware: A first look

by Jethro Beekman – Oct 8, 2015 – Updated: Dec 9, 2015. Filed under: English, Technology, Security, SGX.

Without much fanfare, Intel has released Software Guard Extensions (SGX) in Skylake. When I say “without much fanfare,” I mean practically only the following paragraph hidden on page 3 of a press fact sheet: Continue reading…Comments

On OpenSSH and Logjam

by Jethro Beekman – May 20, 2015 . Filed under: English, Technology, Security, SSH.

Recent work showing the feasibility of calculating discrete logarithms on large integers has put the Diffie-Hellman key exchange parameters we use every day in the spotlight. I have looked at what this means for SSH key exchange. In short, on your SSH server, do the following: Continue reading…Comments