Security News > 2020 > March > The EARN-IT Act

The reason for this is, whilst it's easy enough to design a keyboard and display system on a "Secure token" that you can use as easily as a smallish mobile phone, the real usabiliry problem is getting the various plain/cipher texts in and out of the device into the communications channel end point device without compromising the "Secure token" by extending the communications channel into it via a side channel of some form.

Then there are a whole load of other hardware level Shannon Channels for "Signaling" including in some cases "Break" on the basic Tx-Rx channels.

The point is that these twenty basic circuits can all carry information thus can form "Side channels" that work "Out of band" of the assumed data channel.

So when using an external token it's undesirable from a security asspect to make a connection you can not see "Covert channels" on, that could be leaking secret information "On demand" rather than all the time.

The problem is between each addition there are numerous security gaps of many forms which can result in any number of "Side channels" that can carry information.

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https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/03/the_earn-it_act.html