Rational Survivability

Amazon's Kindle: Some Interesting Security Thoughts

My Kindle2 showed up yesterday. I un-boxed it, turned it on and within 3 minutes had downloaded my first book and was reading away (Thomas Barnett's "Great Powers," if you must know.)

So this morning after I checked my email on my other indispensable tool/toy, my iPhone, I realized something was missing from the Kindle: a password.

So you might think "Hoff, why would you need a password for a device that lets you read books?'

Well, while it's true that the majority of users will simply read "off-the-shelf" books/blogs/magazines they download from Amazon.com's storefront on their Kindles, there are a couple of other interesting scenarios that ran through my mind:

1. To purchase a book using the Kindle, the device is linked to Amazon's One-Click purchase capability.  This means that once I choose to purchase a book, I simply click "Buy" and it's delivered to the device, automagically charging my credit card.  If I lost my device, someone who found it could literally download hundreds of books to the Kindle on my nickel until I am able to do something about it.  This would be short-lived, but really annoying.
2. It is possible using an Amazon web service to convert documents into the Kindle Format and download them over WhisperNet to your device.  Given how convenient this is for reading, imagine what would happen if some crafty person decided to convert and download a sensitive document to the Kindle and then lose the device.  Imagine if that document contained PII or other confidential/sensitive information?  I wager we'll see a breach notification being issued based on someone losing a Kindle.

Yes, I know it's a piece of "consumer" equipment, but look a little further down the line: college students using it for textbooks and all sorts of other communications, business people using it for reading corporate materials, etc...

I am interested in exploring the following elements in the long term:

1. An option for password-protected access to the device itself.
2. A content-rating based password-controlled parental rating system for certain materials. My kids already grabbed my Kindle and (see #1 above) downloaded 3 kids books to it.  I may not want them to read certain content.
3. Remote self-destruct 
4. Encryption of content (at rest, in motion)
5. Security of Whispernet itself
6. WiFi (and it's attendant issues)

I'm sure as I dwell on this, there will be other issues that crop up, but the security wonk in me was in full gear this morning.

You have any other security shortcomings or concerns you've thought of re: the Kindle? 

/Hoff

How I Know The Cloud Ain't Real...

You want to know how I know that The Cloud is all hot air and will never catch on?

...because I can't order it on Amazon.com and get free shipping with Prime.

FAIL!  FAIL, I say.

/Hoff

Follow-up to Amazon MP3 Watermarking

As a follow-up to my blog entry here regarding Amazon.com and MP3 Watermarking...

Alex Halderman over at the Freedom To Tinker blog yesterday posted an entry that seems to confirm the theory that Amazon.com is not individually tagging each MP3 file purchased and that any file downloaded with the same title is identical to that downloaded by another user:

Last week Amazon.com launched a DRM-free music store. It sells tracks from two major labels and many independents in the unprotected MP3 file format. In addition to being DRM-free, Amazon’s songs are not individually watermarked. This is an important step forward for the music industry.

Some content companies see individualized watermarks as a consumer-friendly alternative to DRM. Instead of locking down files with restrictive technology, individualized watermarking places information in them that identifies the purchasers, who could conceivably face legal action if the files were publicly shared. Apple individually watermarks DRM-free tracks sold on iTunes, but every customer who purchases a particular track from Amazon receives the exact same file.

The company has stated as much, and colleagues and I confirmed this by buying a small number of files with different Amazon accounts and verifying that they were bit-for-bit identical. (As Wired reports, some files on Amazon’s store have been watermarked by the record labels, but each copy sold contains the same mark. The labels could use these marks to determine that a pirated track originated from Amazon, but they can’t trace a file to a particular user.)

This is good news and I thank Alex and his friends for doing the dirty work and actually confirming these statements instead of just parroting them back and taking Amazon's word for it.  The rest of Alex's blog entry provides good insight as to the risks -- legal, security and otherwise -- that swirl around the contentious topic of DRM.  Please read the article in its entirety.

/Hoff