Risky Business #111 -- PLAID make Gutmann ANGRY! Gutmann SMASH!

Documentation for Centrelink's home-baked protocol "lacking"...
11 Jun 2009 » Risky Business

This week's episode is hosted by Vigabyte and brought to you by Tenable Network Security.

On this week's show we're looking back at an issue we covered a little while ago: PLAID. No, not the oh-so-groovy pattern, but Centrelink's home-baked authentication protocol.

PLAID is a contactless smart card authentication protocol designed by Australia's welfare agency and released a couple of months ago. They're hoping to have it recognised as an ISO standard, but not everyone's convinced that's a good idea.

We'll be hearing from the University of Auckland's Peter Gutmann. He's a bit of a rockstar in the smart card and crypto fields, and he's had a look at the supporting documentation released by Centrelink and isn't too impressed.

It might sound like an Australia-centric story, but it's not. This is a fascinating case-study-in-progress for anyone considering doing this sort of wheel reinvention project.

In this week's sponsor segment we chat to Marcus Ranum about the liability chain when data leaks.

Securus Global's Declan Ingram joined host Patrick Gray at the pub to discuss the week's news headlines. Sorry about the background noise!