In this post I’ll discuss how a landmark piece of privacy research was widely misinterpreted, how this misinterpretation deterred the development of privacy technologies rather than spurring it, how a recent paper set the record straight, and what we can learn from all this. The research in question is about browser fingerprinting. Because of differences […]
Archives for 2018
Fast Web-based Attacks to Discover and Control IoT Devices
June 21, 2018 by
By Gunes Acar, Danny Y. Huang, Frank Li, Arvind Narayanan, and Nick Feamster Two web-based attacks against IoT devices made the rounds this week. Researchers Craig Young and Brannon Dorsey showed that a well known attack technique called “DNS rebinding” can be used to control your smart thermostat, detect your home address or extract unique […]
Exfiltrating data from the browser using battery discharge information
June 20, 2018 by
Modern batteries are powerful – indeed they are smart, and have a privileged position enabling them to sense device utilization patterns. A recent research paper has identified a potential threat: researchers (from Technion, University of Texas Austin, Hebrew University) devise a scenario where malicious batteries are supplied to user devices (e.g. via compromised supply chains): An […]
Princeton Dialogues of AI and Ethics: Launching case studies
May 21, 2018 by
Summary: We are releasing four case studies on AI and ethics, as part of the Princeton Dialogues on AI and Ethics. The impacts of rapid developments in artificial intelligence (“AI”) on society—both real and not yet realized—raise deep and pressing questions about our philosophical ideals and institutional arrangements. AI is currently applied in a wide […]
How to constructively review a research paper
May 15, 2018 by
Any piece of research can be evaluated on three axes: Correctness/validity — are the claims justified by evidence? Impact/significance — how will the findings affect the research field (and the world)? Novelty/originality — how big a leap are the ideas, especially the methods, compared to what was already known? There are additional considerations such as […]
