Unisys gets 'stealthy' with secure virtual terminal

Rich people and public sector workers can now get the kind of network security that used to be reserved for military organizations. Unisys is known mostly for its ClearPath mainframes and various outsourcing and other services that it sells to financial, transportation, and retail companies and various governments that buy its …

[Sir Alien]

This like all else will still fail...

Such a pitty. All this "military" grade encryption and protection that these corps make and some random person can still just walk through their "military" systems (aka. cracks/hacks)

Why? Well security is no bloody good IF YOU DONT USE IT!

Security, at least the basics is so simple and cheap to implement yet the american military still manage to screw it up.

Firewalls, many computers have them so use them. Hardware firewalls are prefered but a software firewall is still better than no firewall at all.

Passwords, shoot every employee that dares use crap passwords like "admin", "password", "etc". Yes even the big shots need their arse kicking.

This might not be 100% on topic but it does belong because I bet you with all this fancy Unisys encryption/secure terminal stick cum stuff will this be useless with some higher up that has his password taped to this stick.

Penguin. Firewalled in 5 seconds flat.

[Crazy Operations Guy]

OpenBSD

Firewalled on install. Linux was never built for security and anyone that thinks otherwise needs to read Linus' writings.

[Christian Berger]

Where this will fail

1. It uses a PC which is plugged into that "secure virtual terminal" which can easily be compromised. (easy in todays world)

2. The physical security might be compromised by a skilful attacker being able to continue to power the device while dismantling it. (possible, but hard)

[Anonymous Coward]

Screenscraping ?!

So how does this thing prevent screen-scraping if the video driver is compromised, or if I can take photos of the screen? And how about keylogging?

It seems to me this is a great way to trick people into thinking they are secure, and parting them from lots of money.

[Chris Harden]

Tepest

They are probably referring to the technology that is used to reduce the effectiveness of the tempest attack - it's really advanced, I think it's called 'low contrst colors' or something like that.

They might also be referring to something along the lines of obscuring window figerprints to stop screen scrapers detecting when a 'secure' window is open (IE I have an application that looks for the spotify window to send it a message to play/pause when I hit the blue thinkpad button on my laptop) and capturing its contents.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Tempest

[FAIL icon]*

Gosh, *that* advanced :-)

With security techniques like that we can all sleep safer.

The trouble is the device is being promoted for use in a 'hostile' environment where the provenance of the host machine is unknown. If that machine, and/or the physical environment where it is being used is compromised, it's already 'game over' before they start. The weak-point is that you need UI between the human user, and if the human user can see the screen, so can others. And if the human needs to provide input - entering a password, for example - then that can be observed too.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't use security devices at all, on that basis that absolute security isn't possible, but that a little more honesty about the limitations would stop users being lulled into a false sense of security.

---

* Yes, I can 'choose' my own icon. That fact you prefer not to display it for ACs is a different issue. But it's your site, and I respect that.

[John Sturdy]

Blocking screenscraping? Blocking anything at all? From a USB stick?

I don't see how an external peripheral like this can block anything -- surely that would require knowledge of (and probably hacking into) the OS? Run a different OS (or a later version of the same one) and how will it cope with that? In fact, it's the OS's job to prevent external things from interfering with functions (including screenscraping).

[Bryn Evans]

Human Nature

So! No one is ever going to misplace, loose or otherwise foul up, with one of these sticks. Huh?

[amanfromMars 1]

How Good are urDreams?

In CyberSpace in the Beginning there is no security to prevent the presentation of future ideas, and the great game plans they furnish ...... for whenever Reality is a Fiction Application, is Perfectly Shared Imagination a Power without Equal.

You may like to consider that Fact as an IT Fiction for front running with currency to generate novel power. You won't be alone, that's for sure.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah But ...

I bet they can't sell me an ink ribbon for my network drive unisys printer, I have to use WD-40 right now!

[Mike Hocker]

EAL4+

NSA's internal networks only run EAL4+? Criminy, here I thought they had some premier uber security....

[Herby]

I've got the YoYo...

I've got the string...

Encryption, you decide!

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

And securely made

in china.

As is the keyboard that you are typing the super-secret unlike code on