IGC-approval levels for some types of Flight Recorders

All of this seems laughable to me. A one hour consulting fee
to David Copperfield and one could easily get as many World Records as
one wants. There are a million low tech ways to cheat that
would never be detected by a billion bits of PK cryptography.

Ultimately I believe by far the most effective way to
deter cheating is the rule mentioned in the 2005 IGC meeting
minutes whereby the FAI sporting license is permanently
revoked if cheating is proven.

The prospect of proving someone is a cheat and getting 15 minutes of
fame is so much more interesting than the WR itself, WRs will always
come under more scrutiny in ways never concieved by the IGC that
cheating will be very difficult to keep a secret.

Besides this, anyone following the advances solving Fermat's Last
Theorem or Primality knows that an NP=P proof isn't so farfetched.
PK has definitely not been proven uncrackable.
There is a good reason the DOD uses a combination of cryptography
AND physical security for its most secret messages.

The IGC focus on "improved" technology gets a big yawn from me.
But if it distracts the technophiles away from
modifying and complicating other (important) parts of the
sporting code, I support it completely!

In article ,
Andrew Warbrick wrote:
At 09:30 18 March 2005, Mottley wrote:

T o d d P a t t i s t wrote:
Ian Strachan wrote:

Which cryptographic algorithms are considered ``equivalent''
to
RSA?
What is the minimum key length prescribed?
DSA for one,
On key length, for a new type of recorder for IGC-approval
for 'all
flights' he answer is a private key of at least 512
bits.

This all seems to me to be roughly like putting a
bank vault
door on a house with windows. Yes, the door is better,
but
the thief's going to come through the window.

Public/private key cryptographic algorithms work like
this:
Alice has a secret key and uses it to send a message
to Bob.
Bob wants to make sure the message actually came from
Alice, so he uses the public key to decrypt and verify.
The
relationship between the public key and the private
key is
such that you can't determine the private key from
the
public key. Thus, Bob can be sure that the message
came
from someone who had the secret key, i.e., Alice and
not the
bad guy Snake, who does not have the secret key.

In the world of gliders, Alice is the Flight Recorder
and
has the secret key. Bob is the FAI and wants to make
sure
the message is really from the FR. The pilot submitting
the
igc trace is our Snake! However, since Snake owns
and
controls Alice (it's his flight recorder) all he has
to do
is open up Alice and get or use the secret key. I
just
don't see how you can stop this by going from 128
bit to 256
bit to 512 bit keys. Regardless of length, Snake
owns and
controls Alice.

Don't forget that Alice has a Chastity Belt!!! . ie
a physical security
switch wich will void the security of the Flight Recorder
when the case
is opened.



So let's say Snake is rich enough to afford two Alices.
He can sacrifice one Alice to find out all about where
the switch is, he now knows how to defeat the switch,
by cutting the case if necessary and has a nice clean
case from Alice 1 with which to rebuild Alice 2 having
done the dirty deed.





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Mark J. Boyd

Apart from WR claims, I would be quite interested in
some progress and discussion on allowing COTS GPS
to validate Silver and perhaps Gold badge flights.

At least allowing a COTS GPS to be used in conjunction with
a barograph for Silver distance flights (like an
out and return).

Anything to make the Silver Badge easier to
validate would really help encourage pilots to transition
to X-C, in my opinion.

I know a LOT of pilots who have done Silver distance, but
not officially, due to the silly equipment requirements.
If we can get away from the "calibration"
garbage and grant some validity (even with a large margin of
error) to GPS altitudes, I think a fourfold reduction
in GPS price would really help this area.

Just because we "have" outdated rocket science doesn't mean we
need to "use" outdated rocket science. Pressure altitude
was useful because that was all they had. These days
it is an antique, a quaint reminder of a primitive time...

In article ,
Jancsika wrote:

I agree with you, I just added this short clarification.
Actually I would be happy even with the COTS solution...

/Janos

Andrew Warbrick wrote:
That's my understanding too. However, it does not mean
that a determined cheat couldn't, in theory, compromise
the security of their own logger and secure a world
record.

I think the point I was trying to make is that the
system isn't bulletproof, I don't consider my Colibri
to be much more secure than a Cambridge model 10, and
if I was a Cambridge logger owner I'd be cheesed off.


After all, these guys were the 'early adopters' who
got the whole secure logger system kickstarted and
paid more for the privilege. Without these 'early adopters'
we'd still be smoking barographs and losing claims
when the photo developers cut the negative.

At 13:00 18 March 2005, Jancsika wrote:

As I know every unit has it's own unique key (at least
should). So if
you manage to open a logger box without clearing the
key, you can create
fake logs only for that unit.

/Janos









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Mark J. Boyd

How many of the contributors to this thread have attempted a world
record?

Every single flight! And if it wasn't for poor weather, a lousy glider,
no crew, not enough water and sandwiches, and the need to pee, I'd
have dozens of World Records! :PPPP


Tim Newport-Peace

"Indecision is the Key to Flexibility."


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Mark J. Boyd