Facebook is making a new and stronger commitment to privacy. Last month, the company hired three of its most vociferous critics and installed them in senior technical positions. And on Wednesday, Mark Zuckerberg wrote that the company will pivot to focus on private conversations over the public sharing that has long defined the platform, even … Read More “Judging Facebook’s Privacy Shift” »
Category: essays
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The Crypto Wars have been waging off-and-on for a quarter-century. On one side is law enforcement, which wants to be able to break encryption, to access devices and communications of terrorists and criminals. On the other are almost every cryptographer and computer security expert, repeatedly explaining that there’s no way to provide this capability without … Read More “Cybersecurity for the Public Interest” »
In his 2008 white paper that first proposed bitcoin, the anonymous Satoshi Nakamoto concluded with: “We have proposed a system for electronic transactions without relying on trust.” He was referring to blockchain, the system behind bitcoin cryptocurrency. The circumvention of trust is a great promise, but it’s just not true. Yes, bitcoin eliminates certain trusted … Read More “Blockchain and Trust” »
Our work in cybersecurity is inexorably intertwined with public policy and — more generally — the public interest. It’s obvious in the debates on encryption and vulnerability disclosure, but it’s also part of the policy discussions about the Internet of Things, cryptocurrencies, artificial intelligence, social media platforms, and pretty much everything else related to IT. … Read More “Public-Interest Tech at the RSA Conference” »
The so-called Crypto Wars have been going on for 25 years now. Basically, the FBI — and some of their peer agencies in the UK, Australia, and elsewhere — argue that the pervasive use of civilian encryption is hampering their ability to solve crimes and that they need the tech companies to make their systems … Read More “Evaluating the GCHQ Exceptional Access Proposal” »
No one doubts that artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) will transform cybersecurity. We just don’t know how, or when. While the literature generally focuses on the different uses of AI by attackers and defenders and the resultant arms race between the two I want to talk about software vulnerabilities. All software … Read More “Machine Learning to Detect Software Vulnerabilities” »
On November 4, 2016, the hacker “Guccifer 2.0,: a front for Russia’s military intelligence service, claimed in a blogpost that the Democrats were likely to use vulnerabilities to hack the presidential elections. On November 9, 2018, President Donald Trump started tweeting about the senatorial elections in Florida and Arizona. Without any evidence whatsoever, he said … Read More “Propaganda and the Weakening of Trust in Government” »
Democracy is an information system. That’s the starting place of our new paper: “Common-Knowledge Attacks on Democracy.” In it, we look at democracy through the lens of information security, trying to understand the current waves of Internet disinformation attacks. Specifically, we wanted to explain why the same disinformation campaigns that act as a stabilizing influence … Read More “Information Attacks against Democracies” »
Due to ever-evolving technological advances, manufacturers are connecting consumer goods — from toys to light bulbs to major appliances — to the Internet at breakneck speeds. This is the Internet of Things, and it’s a security nightmare. The Internet of Things fuses products with communications technology to make daily life more effortless. Think Amazon’s Alexa, … Read More “New IoT Security Regulations” »
Earlier this week, the New York Times reported that the Russians and the Chinese were eavesdropping on President Donald Trump’s personal cell phone and using the information gleaned to better influence his behavior. This should surprise no one. Security experts have been talking about the potential security vulnerabilities in Trump’s cell phone use since he … Read More “Cell Phone Security and Heads of State” »