Even computer security pros vulnerable to scams
(AP)
AP - Computer security professionals tend to be a highly paranoid bunch, seeing potential threats everywhere. It turns out that some aren't cautious enough, though.
New US cyber defense coordinator hints at plans
(AP)
AP - One of the United States' biggest challenges in securing government computers from foreign attacks isn't necessarily technical. The country first needs to figure out how much those networks are worth and how much the U.S. should spend on protecting them, the new Homeland Security official in charge of that effort said Thursday.
Major Internet security flaw also affects e-mail
(AP)
</a>AP - A newly discovered flaw in the Internet's core infrastructure not only permits hackers to force people to visit Web sites they didn't want to, it also allows them to intercept e-mail messages, the researcher who discovered the bug said Wednesday.
Lenovo says quarterly profits up 65 percent
(AP)
<p>AP - Lenovo Group Ltd., the world's No. 4 PC maker, said Thursday its quarterly profit rose 65 percent as strong sales in China and emerging economies offset weakness in the United States.
Looking inside the Storm worm botnet
(CNET)
CNET - LAS VEGAS--On Wednesday, Joe Stewart, director of malware research for SecureWorks, presented his work on protocols and encryption used by the Storm worm botnet at Black Hat 2008.
JAJAH turns mobile telephones into translation tools
(AFP)
<p>AFP - Internet voice telephony firm JAJAH on Thursday launched a first-of-its-kind free service that lets English and Mandarin speakers use mobile telephones to translate conversations.
New Camera Mimics Design of Human Eye
(NewsFactor)
NewsFactor - Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Northwestern University have announced the development of a camera based on the biological design of the human eye. While it won't make a 10-megapixel digital camera obsolete, it may be a huge breakthrough in bioengineering.
FCC Is Field Testing Devices to Gauge Interference With Theatrical Microphone...
Playbill - The Federal Communication Commission's Office of Engineering and Technology (OET) is currently field testing the performance of prototype White Space Devices, like laptops, which use the same free broadcast television spectrum as theatrical wireless microphones.
IBM Urges Better Linux Design, More Business Focus
(NewsFactor)
NewsFactor - Years ago, the Linux open-source operating system seemed ready to offer a nonproprietary alternative to Microsoft Windows. But "Linux on the desktop" never took off.
Microsoft Games to Use Havok's Software Physics
(PC Magazine)
PC Magazine - Microsoft has inked a long-term deal with Havok, allowing all of their internal and affiliated studios full access to the company's entire library of physics tools.
Microsoft Releases SQL Server 2008 To Manufacturing
(NewsFactor)
NewsFactor - Microsoft announced Wednesday that the 2008 version of SQL Server, its data-management and business-intelligence platform, has been released to manufacturing.
'Dark Knight' reigns not in video game
(AP)
AP - It's a puzzle worthy of The Riddler: Why is there no video game based on "The Dark Knight"?
Comcast Gets Slapped, But the FCC Wisely Leaves its Options Open
The FCC’s recent Comcast action—whose full text is unavailable as yet, though it was described in a press release and statements from each comissioner—is a lesson in the importance of technological literacy for policymaking. The five commissioners’ views, as reflected in their statements, are strongly correlated to the degree of understanding of the fact pattern [...]
iPhone Apps Show Industry the Benefits of Openness
Today’s New York Times reports on the impact of Apple’s decision to allow third-party application software on the iPhone:
In the first 10 days after Apple opened its App Store for the iPhone, consumers downloaded more than 25 million applications, ranging from games like Super Monkey Ball to tools like New York City subway maps. It [...]
Where are the Technologists on the EAC Advisory Board?
Barbara Simons, an accomplished computer scientist and e-voting expert, was recently appointed to the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) Board of Advisors. (The EAC is the U.S. Federal body responsible for voting technology standards, among other things.) This is good news.
The board has thirty-seven members, of which four positions are allocated for “members representing [...]
License for an open-source voting system?
Back when we were putting together the grant proposal for ACCURATE, one of the questions that we asked ourselves, and which the NSF people asked us as well, was whether we would produce a “bright shiny object,” which is to say whether or not we would produce a functional voting machine that could ostensibly be [...]
Plenty of Blame to Go Around in Yahoo Music Shutdown
People have been heaping blame on Yahoo after it announced plans to shut down its Yahoo Music Store DRM servers on September 30. The practical effect of the shutdown is to make music purchased at the store unusable after a while.
Though savvy customers tended to avoid buying music in forms [...]
What’s the Cyber in Cyber-Security?
Recently Barack Obama gave a speech on security, focusing on nuclear, biological, and infotech threats. It was a good, thoughtful speech, but I couldn’t help noticing how, in his discussion of the infotech threats, he promised to appoint a “National Cyber Advisor” to give the president advice about infotech threats. It’s now [...]
The Decline of Localist Broadcasting Policies
Public policy, in the U.S. at least, has favored localism in broadcasting: programming on TV and radio stations is supposed to be aimed, at least in part, at the local community. Two recent events call this policy into question.
The first event is the debut of the Pandora application on the iPhone. Pandora [...]
Transit Card Maker Sues Dutch University to Block Paper
NXP, which makes the Mifare transit cards used in several countries, has sued Radboud University Nijmegen (in the Netherlands), to block publication of a research paper, “A Practical Attack on the MIFARE Classic,” that is scheduled for publication at the ESORICS security conference in October. The new paper reportedly shows fatal security flaws in [...]
Could Too Much Transparency Lead to Sunburn?
On Tuesday, the Houston Chronicle published a story about the salaries of local government employees. Headlined “Understaffing costs Houston taxpayers $150 million in overtime,” it was in many respects a typical piece of local “enterprise” journalism, where reporters go out and dig up information that the public might not already be aware is newsworthy. The [...]
Viacom, YouTube, and the Dangerous Assembly of Facts
On July 2nd, Viacom’s lawsuit against Google’s YouTube unit saw a significant ruling, potentially troubling for user privacy. Viacom asked for, and judge Louis L. Stanton ordered Google to turn over, the logs of each viewing of all videos in the YouTube database, showing the username and IP address of the user who was viewing [...]
Vendor misinformation in the e-voting world
Last week, I testified before the Texas House Committee on Elections (you can read my testimony). I’ve done this many times before, but I figured this time would be different. This time, I was armed with the research from the California “Top to Bottom” reports and the Ohio EVEREST reports. I was part of the [...]
Newspapers’ Problem: Trouble Targeting Ads
Richard Posner has written a characteristically thoughtful blog entry about the uncertain future of newspapers. He renders widespread journalistic concern about the unwieldy character of newspapers into the crisp economic language of “bundling”:
Bundling is efficient if the cost to the consumer of the bundled products that he doesn’t want is less than the cost saving [...]
The End of Theory? Not Likely
An essay in the new Wired, “The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete,” argues that we won’t need scientific theories any more, now that we have so much stored information and such great tools for analyzing it. Wired has never been the best source for accurate technology information, [...]
Copyright, Technology, and Access to the Law
James Grimmelmann has an interesting new essay, “Copyright, Technology, and Access to the Law,” on the challenges of ensuring that the public has effective knowledge of the laws. This might sound like an easy problem, but Grimmelmann combines history and explanation to show why it can be difficult. The law — which [...]
New bill advances open data, but could be better for reuse
Senators Obama, Coburn, McCain, and Carper have introduced the Strengthening Transparency and Accountability in Federal Spending Act of 2008 (S. 3077), which would modify their 2006 transparency act. That first bill created USASpending.gov, a searchable web site of government outlays. USASpending.gov—which was based on software developed by OMB Watch and the Sunlight Foundation—allows end users [...]
Study Shows DMCA Takedowns Based on Inconclusive Evidence
A new study by Michael Piatek, Yoshi Kohno and Arvind Krishnamurthy at the University of Washington shows that copyright owners’ representatives sometimes send DMCA takedown notices where there is no infringement — and even to printers and other devices that don’t download any music or movies. The authors of the study received more than [...]
NJ Election Day: Voting Machine Status
Today is primary election day in New Jersey, for all races except U.S. President. (The presidential primary was Feb. 5.) Here’s a roundup of the voting-machine-related issues.
First, Union County found that Sequoia voting machines had difficulty reporting results for a candidate named Carlos Cedeño, reportedly because it couldn’t handle the n-with-tilde character in [...]
Government Data and the Invisible Hand
David Robinson, Harlan Yu, Bill Zeller, and I have a new paper about how to use infotech to make government more transparent. We make specific suggestions, some of them counter-intuitive, about how to make this happen. The final version of our paper will appear in the Fall issue of the Yale Journal [...]
The Microsoft Case: The Second Browser War
Today I’ll wrap up my series of posts looking back at the Microsoft Case, by looking at the Second Browser War that is now heating up.
The First Browser War, of course, started in the mid-1990s with the rise of Netscape and its Navigator browser. Microsoft was slow to spot the importance the [...]
The Microsoft Case: The Government’s Theory, in Hindsight
Continuing my series of posts on the tenth anniversary of the Microsoft antitrust case, I want to look today at the government’s theory of the case, and how it looks with ten years of hindsight.
The source of Microsoft’s power in Windows was what the government dubbed the “applications barrier to entry”. Users chose their [...]
