The emergence and proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) devices on industrial, enterprise, and home networks brings with it unprecedented risk. The potential magnitude of this risk was made concrete in October 2016, when insecure Internet-connected cameras launched a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on Dyn, a provider of DNS service for many large […]
Regulation and Anti-Regulation
February 15, 2017 by
[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 […]
Engineering around social media border searches
February 10, 2017 by
The latest news is that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is considering a requirement, while passing through a border checkpoint, to inspect a prospective visitor’s “online presence”. That means immigration officials would require users to divulge their passwords to Facebook and other such services, which the agent might then inspect, right there, at the […]
Regulatory Questions Abound as Mobile Payments Clamor for Position in Apps
February 1, 2017 by
People frequently associate mobile payments with “tap and pay” — walking into a store, flashing your smartphone, and then walking out with stuff. But in-store sales really aren’t the focus of companies working on mobile payment issues. That’s because payment in stores generally isn’t a problem in need of a fix. Swiping a payment card […]
Concerned about Internet of Things Security?
January 30, 2017 by
There is no shortage of warnings about the need to improve security for the Internet of Things: The Guardian asks “Can we secure the internet of things in time to prevent another cyber-attack?”. The New York Times calls for “Stepping up Security for an Internet of Things world”. Technology Review reports that Security Experts Warn […]
