[Hi, Freedom to Tinker readers. I’m back at Princeton, having completed my tour of duty as Deputy U.S. CTO, so I can resume writing here. I’ll start with some posts on specific topics, like the one below. As time goes on, I’ll have a lot more to say about what I learned. –Ed Felten] Politicians often […]
FREAK Attack: The Chickens of ‘90s Crypto Restriction Come Home to Roost
March 3, 2015 by
Today researchers disclosed a new security flaw in TLS/SSL, the protocol used to secure web connections. The flaw is significant in itself, but it is also a good example of what can go wrong when government asks to build weaknesses into security systems. Back in the early 1990s, it was illegal to export most products […]
Lenovo Pays For Careless Product Decisions
February 23, 2015 by
The discovery last week that Lenovo laptops had been shipping with preinstalled adware that left users wide open to security exploitation triggered a lot of righteous anger in the tech community. David Auerbach at Slate wrote that Lenovo had “betrayed its customers and sold out their security”. Whenever a big company does something so monumentally […]
In Partial Defense of the Seahawks' Play Calling
February 2, 2015 by
The conventional wisdom about last night’s Super Bowl is that the Seahawks made a game-losing mistake by running a passing play from the Patriots’ one yard line in the closing seconds. Some are calling it the worst Super Bowl play call ever. I disagree. I won’t claim it was the right call, but I do […]
On the Sony Pictures Security Breach
December 23, 2014 by
The recent security breach at Sony Pictures is one of the most embarrassing breaches ever, though not the most technically sophisticated. The incident raises lots of interesting questions about the current state of security and public policy.
