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Whitewood Encryption Systems® Invites Black Hat 2015 Attendees to a Briefing Entitled, "Understanding and Managing Entropy Usage"
[July 30, 2015]

Whitewood Encryption Systems® Invites Black Hat 2015 Attendees to a Briefing Entitled, "Understanding and Managing Entropy Usage"


Whitewood Encryption Systems Inc.®, a developer of next-generation entropy management systems, invites attendees of Black Hat USA 2015 in Las Vegas to a presentation entitled, "Understanding and Managing Entropy Usage" being given by Bruce Potter, Chief Technology Officer at KEYW Corporation.

Mr. Potter, who is also the founder of The Shmoo Group of security, crypto and privacy professionals, will be presenting research on the core concerns surrounding the creation and utilization of entropy and random data, a scarce resource that is in high demand to support the security of modern IT systems.

"The subject of entropy is surrounded by mythology and misunderstanding and we felt it was vital to analyze what's really happening," said Potter. "Measuring entropy is hard, and yet the cost of failure can be catastrophic. What we found was that although tools exist within the kernel, in the applications, and even in the hardware itself, they all exist in isolation - no-one owns the problem. It is only when you take a holistic view that you see how false assumptions have a very real impact on security. In the whitepaper and during the Black Hat session we expose some of these concerns and discuss strategies to avoid them."

Enterprises today have failed to fully understand their entropy requirements or utilization, and their reliance on Pseudo Random Number Generators (PRNGs) to generate random data leaves them exposed. Potter and co-presenter Sasha Wood, also of KEYW Corporation, will discuss the critical role that random data plays in key generation and ubiquitous security protocols such a SSL/TLS, and how the generation of sufficient quality and quantity of entropy is often misunderstood and taken for granted.

Potter will present a quantitative analysis of the generation and consumption of entropy in a wide variety of systems, including the Linux Kernel, Android (News - Alert), OpenSSL, Apache and Nginx. During the session, he will also expose the impact of enabling a variety of Transport Layer Security (TLS) modes, including the use of Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) a security model that is increasingly popular.

"Gaining access to sufficient entropy of acceptable quality has been a challenge for application developers and systems architects for many years. As a result, a wide variety of tools and work-arounds have been devised and implemented. The question is, do they work?" said Richard Moulds, Vice President of Business Strategy and Development at Whtewood. "Even if the answer in some situations is 'yes', it's unlikely to be true universally. The move towards virtualized environments and cloud-based systems means that entropy is getting harder to find, and yet more and more applications involve the use of cryptography and crave it more. At some point demand for entropy outstrips supply and security takes a dive. We felt that it was important to understand how near that point we really are."



The presentation will take place on Wednesday, Aug. 5 at 11:30 a.m. in the South Seas room of the Mandalay Bay South Convention Center.

For more information on Potter's presentation, visit https://www.blackhat.com/us-15/briefings.html#bruce-potter. More information on Whitewood can be found at www.whitewoodencryption.com or by visiting company at Booth 967 at the Black Hat conference.


About Whitewood Encryption Systems, Inc.

Whitewood® is addressing one of the most fundamental challenges associated with all modern cryptosystems - entropy management. Whitewood's products exploit quantum mechanics to meet demand for high-quality entropy used for random data and key generation at scale. Building upon a base of quantum cryptography capabilities developed over the course of the past two decades at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Whitewood addresses operational vulnerabilities in any application that employs encryption, certificates and keys in clouds, devices and browsers. Whitewood is part of Allied Minds Federal Innovations, the division of Allied Minds dedicated to commercializing U.S. federal intellectual property. More information on Whitewood can be found at www.whitewoodencryption.com.

About Allied Minds

Allied Minds is an innovative U.S. science and technology development and commercialization company. Operating since 2006, Allied Minds forms, funds, manages and builds products and businesses based on innovative technologies developed at leading U.S. universities and federal research institutions. Allied Minds serves as a diversified holding company that supports its businesses and product development with capital, central management and shared services. More information about the Boston-based company can be found at www.alliedminds.com.

Allied Minds Forward-Looking Statement

This press release contains statements that are or may be forward-looking statements, including statements that relate to the company's future prospects, developments and strategies. The forward-looking statements are based on current expectations and are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results, performance and achievements to differ materially from current expectations, including, but not limited to, those risk and uncertainties described in the risk factors included in the company's regulatory filings. These forward-looking statements are based on assumptions regarding the present and future business strategies of the company and the environment in which it will operate in the future. Each forward-looking statement speaks only as at the date of this press release. Except as required by law, regulatory requirement, the Listing Rules and the Disclosure and Transparency Rules, neither the company nor any other party intends to update or revise these forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.


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