According to recent news, Comcast is being sued because it is taking advantage of users’ resources to build up its own nationwide Wi-Fi network. Since mid-2013 the company has been updating consumers’ routers by installing new firmware that makes the router partially devoted to the “home-user” network and partially devoted to the “mobile-user” network (a […]
Cyberterrorism or Cybervandalism?
January 13, 2015 by
When hackers believed by the U.S. government to have been sponsored by the state of North Korea infiltrated Sony Pictures’ corporate network and leaked reams of sensitive documents, the act was quickly labeled an act of “cyberterrorism.” When hackers claiming to be affiliated with ISIS subsequently hijacked the YouTube and Twitter accounts of the U.S. […]
Consensus in Bitcoin: One system, many models
December 26, 2014 by
At a technical level, the Bitcoin protocol is a clever solution to the consensus problem in computer science. The idea of consensus is very general — a number of participants together execute a computation to come to agreement about the state of the world, or a subset of it that they’re interested in. Because of […]
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.
