Group items tagged

It's time to start bookmarking Charles Babbage weirdness.

Bernoulli numbers are a sequence of numbers important to the field of number theory, trigonometric expansions, and analysis. Ada Lovelace wrote a theoretical program to calculate these that would work on Charles Babbage's unfinished Analytical Engine. It's pretty interesting how Lovelace was a "leading figure" in the now massively male-dominated computer programming field, but didn't receive recognition for her work until fairly recently.

See also Riley's bookmark and my comments on it.

This resource is interesting in light of our discussing Babbage and Lovelace, as well as Ada Lovelace Day. This article is particularly interesting to me as it deals with women's contributions to significant advancements in history, many of which are often ignored or excused.

Riley, I mentioned in class that October 14th is Ada Lovelace Day, an international day for recognizing the contributions of women in science. Details: http://findingada.com/. I've wanted to organize an Ada Lovelace Day event here at Vanderbilt for a few years now, but never found the time. Let me know if you'd like to cook something up (an event? a blog series? a Wikipedia editing party?) for the 14th.

I found it really interesting that people took the fact that Lovelace made a few mistakes as an excuse to try to remove her contribution to computer programming. Male scientists and programmers also make mistakes, but we rarely see those used in an attempt to discredit them. Also, she literally designed a computer program before the computer even existed. I think we can excuse a few past mathematical errors.

This blog has information about military cryptography and privacy in general, including this post about the Zimmermann Telegram. Is it ethical to lie to an ally if it is in their best interest? What are the ethics behind spying on one's allies? Do ethics hinder one's ability to win a war, and if so, should ethics be disregarded in times of war? Another interesting post examines how Snowden should be viewed as a patriot, not a traitor. This made me question where one's loyalty should remain- to the government or to the people?

This is a cryptography blogger's translation of Kerckhoff's article about military cryptography. He denotes that secret methods of communication are limited to higher officers due to potential leakage; but by limiting cryptographic use, are they potentially putting at risk the safety of lesser positions in order to keep the secrecy of their cipher methods? Is this just the inevitable nature of cryptography in general?

This resource provides access to articles, news, and blog posts regarding military embedded systems, often using cryptography. One article referenced the cryptography used to secure "Data at Rest" and the length at which this information should be held secure. Is it ethical to keep this information from the public when safety is no longer a concern? At what point should these well-kept secrets become accessible?

And here's Bruce Schneier on that story about Apple's encryption policies thwarting justice. If you read the first piece, you should also read this one.

Here's a recent piece by security expert Bruce Schneier on quantum computing, which is different than quantum cryptography. (I conflated the two during class today.) Quantum computing is very fast computing that could be used to quickly break modern encryption schemes. Quantum cryptography involves sending messages that can't be read, since "looking" at them changes the message. Schneier offers some conjectures about where the NSA is with regard to both technologies.

This is a blog by Bruce Schneier who writes about security in general, under which cryptography falls as a subject.

This blog contains vast amounts of information dealing with military cryptography, both in the past and the present. One of the recent articles discussed the morality of utilizing military level cryptography to ensure complete surveillance of civilians, and whether or not it should be allowed.

A security blog created by a multinational software company.

"The legality of using Firesheep is less wooly when it comes to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which criminalizes accessing computer systems without authorization."

"The legality of using Firesheep is less wooly when it comes to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which criminalizes accessing computer systems without authorization."

This article explains a way that credit card information is stored safely without encryption. Tokenization is a completely different way of securing credit card information than encryption because it completely removes the credit card information and replaces it with a "token" that cannot be retraced to retrieve the credit card information. Encryption has the credit card information hidden somewhere, but tokenization erases it completely which makes it very secure.

Interesting that ~35% of 1000 surveyed have upped the strength of their passwords, but only 6% turned on two-factor ID, which was a major cause of the iCloud hacks going undetected for so long.

It seems that two-factor authentication would not have prevented those iCloud hacks (according to this piece: http://www.tuaw.com/2014/09/02/think-iclouds-two-factor-authentication-protects-your-privacy/), but since Apple has now changed the triggers for two-factor to include things like iCloud access, two-factor will be more helpful going forward. So it is a little surprising that more people haven't enabled it.

I'm also reminded of the ACLU's Chris Soghoian's point (https://www.aclu.org/blog/technology-and-liberty/lessons-celebrity-icloud-photo-breach) that one reason people have crappy Apple passwords is that Apple makes you use your password so darn often. I know I get frustrated when I have to enter my (crazy long) Apple password on my iPhone just to download a free app.

A well-reasoned argument from our favorite security blogger, with plenty of links to help us in writing our final paper. It is also an interesting article as it talks about the debate before Snowden, Wikileaks, and other whistleblowers.

Here's an example of surveillance vs. privacy that doesn't involve security. Instead, the goal is student learning.