Security & privacy

Computer viruses are a real threat, not only to the computers they infect, the people they inconvenience, but also to the available bandwidth and system capacity.

A Sobering Report on Viruses

According to an analysis by Postini of 150 billion e-mail messages sent in 2005, e-mail-borne viruses represented 2.5 percent of all inbound e-mail messages.

This is an interesting article from the UK on a seemingly simple service that will allow you to track a person through their mobile phone. Interesting implications for security and privacy…

Ben Goldacre: How I stalked my girlfriend

For the past week I’ve been tracking my girlfriend through her mobile phone. I can see exactly where she is, at any time of day or night, within 150 yards, as long as her phone is on. It has been very interesting to find out about her day. Now I’m going to tell you how I did it.

This might be interesting.

It is a Windows application that allows you to store encrypted notes in a free-standing executable/document.

I might imagine storing information in the secure document and then sending it to someone, while having communicated the password through another channel.

I will have to think about good applications for this.

Steganos. Privacy Software made easy.

Another interesting article from Wired on mass surveillance and the effects/effictiveness it might have.

Wired News: Mass Spying Means Gross Errors

There are few, if any, studies demonstrating the effectiveness of mass surveillance. People with something to hide are adept at speaking in codes. Teenagers tell their parents they are “going to the movies” when they are going to drink beer. Attackers know to misspell the victim’s name, as journalist Daniel Pearl’s kidnappers and murderers did, to evade e-mail surveillance. Meanwhile, modern filtering technology can’t distinguish between breast cancer websites and pornographic ones.

Any search algorithm, whether public or not, is unlikely to be able to distinguish between innocent and criminal communications.

Another interesting article on cross-overs, this time talking about how people’s use of technology affects the real world.

Wired News: How to Squelch Your Inner Jackass

It’s understood why people use cell phones. What we’re concerned with here is how they use ’em.

I found some interesting articles at Wired this morning. This one is about the importance of cross-over threats — links between the real world and the cyber world. Here the discussion is on the damage a backhoe can do in the cyber domain.
Wired News: The Backhoe: A Real Cyberthreat

… there were more than 675,000 excavation accidents in 2004 in which underground cables or pipelines were damaged

This is an interesting article on fundamental flaws in the Internet and attempts to start again with something new…

The Impact of Emerging Technologies: The Internet Is Broken — Part 2

The Internet’s design was indifferent to whether the information packets added up to a malicious virus or a love letter; it had no provisions for doing much besides getting the data to its destination.

This is an interesting review of security and cryptography developments in 2005…

Financial Cryptography: 2005 in review – The Year I lost my Identity

Going beyond placing ads based on the keywords used in seaches, Yahoo is going to use past browsing behavior to target ads. This is kind of like institutionalized spyware/adware.

Yahoo to experiment with behavioral ads

For example, people who have already searched for information on a particular category of product, such as LCD monitors, will be more likely to see ads for such products on future visits to Yahoo.