Tracking by Smart TVs
Long Twitter thread about the tracking embedded in modern digital televisions. The thread references three academic papers…. Continue reading Tracking by Smart TVs
Category Archives: academicpapers
On Cybersecurity Insurance
Good paper on cybersecurity insurance: both the history and the promise for the future. From the conclusion: Policy makers have long held high hopes for cyber insurance as a tool for improving security. Unfortunately, the available evidence so far should give policymakers pause. Cyber insurance appears to be a weak form of governance at present. Insurers writing cyber insurance focus… Continue reading On Cybersecurity Insurance
On Cybersecurity Insurance
Good paper on cybersecurity insurance: both the history and the promise for the future. From the conclusion: Policy makers have long held high hopes for cyber insurance as a tool for improving security. Unfortunately, the available evidence so far shou… Continue reading On Cybersecurity Insurance
Attacking the Intel Secure Enclave
Interesting paper by Michael Schwarz, Samuel Weiser, Daniel Gruss. The upshot is that both Intel and AMD have assumed that trusted enclaves will run only trustworthy code. Of course, that’s not true. And there are no security mechanisms that can deal w… Continue reading Attacking the Intel Secure Enclave
Attacking the Intel Secure Enclave
Interesting paper by Michael Schwarz, Samuel Weiser, Daniel Gruss. The upshot is that both Intel and AMD have assumed that trusted enclaves will run only trustworthy code. Of course, that’s not true. And there are no security mechanisms that can deal with malicious enclaves, because the designers couldn’t imagine that they would be necessary. The results are predictable. The paper:… Continue reading Attacking the Intel Secure Enclave
AI Emotion-Detection Arms Race
Voice systems are increasingly using AI techniques to determine emotion. A new paper describes an AI-based countermeasure to mask emotion in spoken words. Their method for masking emotion involves collecting speech, analyzing it, and extracting emotional features from the raw signal. Next, an AI program trains on this signal and replaces the emotional indicators in speech, flattening them. Finally, a… Continue reading AI Emotion-Detection Arms Race
Evaluating the NSA’s Telephony Metadata Program
Interesting analysis: "Examining the Anomalies, Explaining the Value: Should the USA FREEDOM Act’s Metadata Program be Extended?" by Susan Landau and Asaf Lubin. Abstract: The telephony metadata program which was authorized under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, remains one of the most controversial programs launched by the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Under… Continue reading Evaluating the NSA’s Telephony Metadata Program
How Privacy Laws Hurt Defendants
Rebecca Wexler has an interesting op-ed about an inadvertent harm that privacy laws can cause: while law enforcement can often access third-party data to aid in prosecution, the accused don’t have the same level of access to aid in their defense: The p… Continue reading How Privacy Laws Hurt Defendants
How Privacy Laws Hurt Defendants
Rebecca Wexler has an interesting op-ed about an inadvertent harm that privacy laws can cause: while law enforcement can often access third-party data to aid in prosecution, the accused don’t have the same level of access to aid in their defense: The proposed privacy laws would make this situation worse. Lawmakers may not have set out to make the criminal… Continue reading How Privacy Laws Hurt Defendants
Another Attack Against Driverless Cars
In this piece of research, attackers successfully attack a driverless car system — Renault Captur’s "Level 0" autopilot (Level 0 systems advise human drivers but do not directly operate cars) — by following them with drones that project images of fake road signs in 100ms bursts. The time is too short for human perception, but long enough to fool the… Continue reading Another Attack Against Driverless Cars