[virgil_disgr4ce]

Did some digging on this. Basically: 1) Some researchers wrote a paper called "Preliminary protocol for interoperable telesurgery" in 2009. (http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.160...) 2) At the end of the paper, they write: "Also, security is an obvious requirement for real world adoption of this kind of service." 3) Last month, some other people showed that you could hax0r this unprotected protocol: http://www.technologyreview.com/view/537001/security-experts...

So in other words, somebody demonstrated that a preliminary protocol that admitted it didn't have any security was insecure. Woo!

[tedunangst]

> And video encryption probably isn’t practical over the kind of network links envisaged for remote surgery in extreme locations. That may not be a security concern but it does raise important issues of privacy.

That's a curious statement. How does encrypting video increase its bandwidth requirements?

[gliese1337]

Typical block ciphers generally require adding padding, which increases the number of bytes that need to be transmitted. But that's negligible for any significant amount of data. I don't think it would ever noticeably increase bandwidth requirements.

[zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC]

Well, counter mode is probably a better idea anyhow--but neither 16 bytes of padding per frame nor the same amount of MAC will be an actual bandwidth problem.