[Reader-list] Dorothy Denning - "geo-encryption"

[Harsh Kapoor]

Time Magazine
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101011126-184999,00.html


Keeping The Hackers At Bay
BY RHETT BUTLER AND ANDREW GOLDSTEIN

Monday, Nov. 26, 2001
When it comes to cyberwarfare, America has a secret weapon: 
Georgetown University professor Dorothy Denning. Battles in 
cyberspace are high-tech brain races: you win by being the first to 
recognize the weaknesses of a new technology--often hacking it 
yourself--and then figuring out how to protect it.

This is what Denning has been doing for nearly three decades. In the 
1970s, when most people thought information security meant locking 
your file cabinets, Denning devised a way for federal agencies such 
as the IRS to release vital information while keeping its most 
sensitive data secure. As computer systems became more complex, she 
discovered a system now widely used for detecting intruders in real 
time, rather than combing through log-in records after the fact.

And now she's pioneering a new field she calls geo-encryption. 
Working with industry, Denning has developed a way to keep 
information undecipherable until it reaches its location, as 
determined by GPS satellites. Movie studios, for example, have been 
afraid to release films digitally for the same reasons record 
companies hate Napster: once loose on the Internet, there's little to 
stop someone from posting the latest blockbuster DVD on the Web for 
all to see and download. With Denning's system, however, only 
subscribers in specified locations--such as movie theaters--would be 
able to unscramble the data. The technology works as well for 
national security as it does for Harry Potter. Coded messages that 
the State Department sends its embassies, for example, could only be 
deciphered in the embassy buildings themselves, greatly reducing the 
risk of interception.

For now, Denning says, terrorists "may want to bring down the power 
grid or the finance system, but it's still easier to blow up a 
building." If she's right, it's due in large part to her.

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[A paper from 1996 by Dorothy Denning and Peter F. MacDoran:
  "Location-Based Authentication: Grounding Cyberspace for Better Security"
  http://www.cs.georgetown.edu/~denning/infosec/Grounding.txt ]



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