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| Image from Pixabay |
"Trenchless technology," it said on the company van. That instantly had my full attention—if you advertise your business with something you don’t do, I immediately wonder: what else don’t they do? But more importantly: what do they actually do?
It was a
van from VLTT, short for Van Leeuwen Trenchless Technology. A company founded
in 1969 by two brothers. Their craft is drilling. They drill under roads,
railways, waterways, and underground infrastructure to install pipes and
conduits underground. And they do it without digging trenches. The street
doesn’t need to be opened when VLTT lays a pipe.
If it were
my company, I’d include something in the name about what I *do* do. Something
like Van Leeuwen Drilling (VLD). Because, well, I also use a lot of trenchless technology.
In fact, I hardly do anything else. Right now, I’m trenchlessly typing a blog,
and when I looked at security incidents yesterday, I did dig through the
available data—figuratively—but no actual digging was involved. Anyway, you get
my point: tell me what you do, not what you don’t do. By the way, I think Elon
Musk’s tunnel-digging company has a brilliant name: The Boring Company.
Although I wonder if the employees enjoy telling people at parties that they
work for a “boring” company.
In my
field, we also use tunnels. These come into existence without digging, even
without drilling. All you need is some math. Or more specifically: cryptography.
Those tunnels are secure connections over a public network. That public network
is often the internet. If you use it to connect to your company—like I’m doing
now, working from home and connected to our data center via the internet—you
don’t want your data traffic to be intercepted along the way. That’s what a
VPN, a Virtual Private Network, is for: a cryptographic tunnel. It’s even a
single-person tunnel; only you use that specific tunnel. Reminds me of that
time we traveled through the U.S. in a camper. In Zion National Park, we had to
go through a tunnel, but due to its round shape, the camper wouldn’t fit.
Rangers stopped traffic on the other side and urged me to drive exactly along
the center line. Only then would the camper fit through. But I digress.
Because
only you use that tunnel, the confidentiality of the data traffic is ensured.
But those tunnels can do more: during setup, it can be checked whether you’re
even allowed to establish a tunnel to that destination, and whether the
destination is actually legitimate. Both endpoints of the tunnel are
authenticated: their identities are verified. Setting up the tunnel involves
digital certificates—think of them as passports. And you need a protocol, an
agreement on the “language” you speak. Examples include TLS/SSL, IPSec, and
OpenVPN.
If you use
digital certificates, you’re using so-called asymmetric cryptography. This form
of cryptography is especially threatened by the quantum computer. If, in a few
years, a quantum computer powerful enough emerges, it will be able to break
asymmetric cryptography. Your VPN tunnel will then be compromised. Unless the
protocol is made quantum-proof in time. That’s being worked on worldwide with
great urgency, but organizations must take action themselves to implement
everything. That takes a lot of time—probably more time than we have. So
there’s urgency.
Still, that
term keeps nagging at me. And what do you know? “Trenchless technology” has a
Wikipedia page in six languages! My surprise was simply due to ignorance. It’s
not uncommon for a field to invent a term that’s not understood outside of it.
Back in the day, there were computer terminals that didn’t use a screen but a
printer; they were essentially printers with a keyboard. Some fellow students
called them “write-printers.” It didn’t make much sense, but we knew what they
meant. And that’s what matters.
And in the big bad world…
- UK carriers are going to tackle phone spoofing.
- Phishers are letting you know that an arrest warrant has been issued against you. [DUTCH]
- The doorbell is going to recognize faces.
- The geolocation of EU employees is simply for sale.
- Apparently, a few American cybersecurity experts couldn't resist the temptation of criminal money.
- Meta earned billions from misleading advertisements. [DUTCH]
- You can use this guide to disable certain features in the new Windows 11 version.
