Today I joined a group of twenty computer scientists in issuing a report criticizing an FBI plan to require makers of secure communication tools to redesign their systems to make wiretapping easy. We argue that the plan would endanger the security of U.S. users and the competitiveness of U.S. companies, without making it much harder […]
Internet Voting Security: Wishful Thinking Doesn’t Make It True
April 3, 2013 by
[The following is a post written at my invitation by Professor Duncan Buell from the University of South Carolina. Curiously, the poll Professor Buell mentions below is no longer listed in the list of past & present polls on the Courier-Journal site, but is available if you kept the link.] On Thursday, March 21, in […]
Security Lessons from the Big DDoS Attacks
March 29, 2013 by
Last week saw news of new Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. These may be the largest DDoS attacks ever, peaking at about 300 Gbps (that is, 300 billion bits per second) of traffic aimed at the target but, notwithstanding some of the breathless news coverage, these attacks are not vastly larger than anything before. […]
How the DMCA Chills Research
March 29, 2013 by
I have a new piece in Slate, on how the DMCA chills security research. In the piece, I tell three stories of DMCA threats against Alex Halderman and me, and talk about how Congress can fix the problem. “The Chilling Effects of the DMCA: The outdated copyright law doesn’t just hurt consumers—it cripples researchers.” “These […]
How the Nokia Browser Decrypts SSL Traffic: A "Man in the Client"
January 11, 2013 by
Over the past couple of days there has been some press coverage over security researcher Guarang Pandya’s report that the browser on his Nokia phone was sending all of his traffic to Nokia proxy servers, including his HTTPS traffic. The disturbing part of his report was evidence that Nokia is not just proxying, but actually […]
