Comment by eurleif
10 days ago
Tangentially, I saw an ad the other day for software which purports to encrypt your keystrokes: https://www.keystrokelock.com/ I have no idea what that means.
10 days ago
Tangentially, I saw an ad the other day for software which purports to encrypt your keystrokes: https://www.keystrokelock.com/ I have no idea what that means.
Me neither.
I looked into their Support documentation and it explains how to run the app, not how it works.
I read a 2-slide "Whitepaper" and it describes the many advantages and sort of tells you how it starts in "Ring 0" and the TPM and uses public-key cryptography, but not how it works.
They have trademarked KTLS™, but Kernel TLS is also an extension of actual TLS into the Linux kernel, so good luck differentiating that. Isn't it fun how you can trademark your trade secrets, but if you attempt to patent them, that means public disclosure.
If I had to hypothesize about it, I'd say that there is a Ring 0 hardware driver that takes the USB data, encrypts it, and the encrypted data is tunneled to each application, where it is somehow decrypted transparently without modifying any of the user's applications.
I would research this more in-depth but gnomes have already stolen my underpants. UUU~~U~~~U+++ATH0+++ NO CARRIER
"Award-winning journalist on Fox News" and the padlock with an American flag really sells it for me.
Maybe I should get in on this grift. Curl American Patriot Gold Marine Corps Never Forget 9/11 Edition for only $200. Loads _any_ URL.
> "Award-winning journalist on Fox News" and the padlock with an American flag really sells it for me.
About 20 years ago I worked on backend stuff for the sales site for a well-known UK retailer that advertised their spiffy new web store on TV.
Part of the TV ad had a couple of smiley young people with Techie Girl typing on a computer, and a big animated padlock swooping in and clicking shut and Mumsy Middle-Aged Manager smiling happily, and cut to Hacker Guy typing furiously in a darkened room as a big padlock pops up on the screen and "SECURITY LOCKED" popping up, as he scowls at the screen. The VO was something like "and it's safe to buy online - our site has Security Built In" <fx: heavy padlock clunks shut>
This sequence - the animation and filming this part right their in our own web dev office - cost over five grand of mid-2000s money to make, most of which being the padlock animations. The clunk was my bike lock.
£5000. Five Thousand Pounds.
I can tell you they spent well under 1/20th of that in developer time to actually write the security code for the site. It didn't even use HTTPS, which was kind of a requirement even in 2006.
if that failed to make money people wouldn't do it
"no one ever went broke underestimating the taste or intelligence of the US public" - HL Mencken