Education Research

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Schneier on Security: Cryptanalysis of SHA-1

Schneier.com

by Bruce Schneier

February 15, 2005

On Tuesday, I blogged about a new cryptanalytic result -- the first attack faster than brute-force against SHA-1. I wrote about SHA, and the need to replace it, last September.

Earlier this week, three Chinese cryptographers showed that SHA-1 is not collision-free. That is, they developed an algorithm for finding collisions faster than brute force.

In 1999, a group of cryptographers built a DES cracker. It was able to perform 256 DES operations in 56 hours. The machine cost $250K to build, although duplicates could be made in the $50K-$75K range.

Will AOL Goof Trigger New U.S. Law?

Sci-tech Today

by Frederick Lane

August 18, 2006

The bill would require Internet companies to destroy obsolete electronic data, and data that could be used to individually identify consumers. The bill would also instruct the FTC to set up standards for the maintenance and destruction of data.

The news that AOL released the search histories of 658,000 of its users is renewing calls for federal legislation to protect consumer privacy online. In the wake of the disclosure, Representative Edward Markey (D-Mass.) urged his colleagues to take action on privacy legislation he proposed in February of this year. "Technology is the engine which will drive our economy into the next century, but the success of this technology balances on the public trust," Markey said. "If 2005 was the year of the data breach, I want to make sure that 2006 is the year of safeguarding the privacy of American citizens by introducing legislation to prevent the stockpiling of private citizens personal data."

35 Inconvenient Truths: The errors in Al Gore's movie

scienceandpublicpolicy.org

by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley

October 18, 2007

A spokesman for Al Gore has issued a questionable response to the news that in October 2007 the High Court in London had identified nine "errors" in his movie An Inconvenient Truth.

The judge had stated that, if the UK Government had not agreed to send to every secondary school in England a corrected guidance note making clear the mainstream scientific position on these nine "errors", he would have made a finding that the Government's distribution of the film and the first draft of the guidance note earlier in 2007 to all English secondary schools had been an unlawful contravention of an Act of Parliament prohibiting the political indoctrination of children.

Minority rules: Scientists discover tipping point for the spread of ideas

sciencedaily.com

by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

May 25, 2014

Scientists have found that when just 10 percent of the population holds an unshakable belief, their belief will always be adopted by the majority of the society.

Sientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have found that when just 10 percent of the population holds an unshakable belief, their belief will always be adopted by the majority of the society. The scientists, who are members of the Social Cognitive Networks Academic Research Center (SCNARC) at Rensselaer, used computational and analytical methods to discover the tipping point where a minority belief becomes the majority opinion. The finding has implications for the study and influence of societal interactions ranging from the spread of innovations to the movement of political ideals.

New Studies Link Cell Phone Radiation with Cancer

scientificamerican.com

by Charles Schmidt

April 3, 2018

Researchers call for greater caution, but skeptics say the evidence from rat studies is not convincing

Does cell phone radiation cause cancer? New studies show a correlation in lab rats, but the evidence may not resolve ongoing debates over causality or whether any effects arise in people. The ionizing radiation given off by sources such as x-ray machines and the sun boosts cancer risk by shredding molecules in the body. But the non-ionizing radio-frequency (RF) radiation that cell phones and other wireless devices emit has just one known biological effect: an ability to heat tissue by exciting its molecules.

"Just a Theory": 7 Misused Science Words

scientificamerican.com

by Tia Ghose

April 2, 2013

From "significant" to "natural," here are seven scientific terms that can prove troublesome for the public and across research disciplines

Hypothesis. Theory. Law. These scientific words get bandied about regularly, yet the general public usually gets their meaning wrong. Now, one scientist is arguing that people should do away with these misunderstood words altogether and replace them with the word "model." But those aren't the only science words that cause trouble, and simply replacing the words with others will just lead to new, widely misunderstood terms, several other scientists said. "A word like 'theory' is a technical scientific term," said Michael Fayer, a chemist at Stanford University. "The fact that many people understand its scientific meaning incorrectly does not mean we should stop using it. It means we need better scientific education."

Bad Raps for Non-Hacks

securityfocus.com

by Mark Rasch

June 16, 2003

A few odd cases show that you don't have be a digital desparado to be accused of a cybercrime... particularly if you embarrass the wrong bureaucrats.

Some recent (and not so recent) cases illustrate how computer security professionals and well intentioned whistle-blowers face a genuine risk of running afoul of computer crime statutes simply for forgetting to ask the right person, "May I'," before doing a computer security assessment. Take the case of Scott Moulten, a computer security professional in Georgia. He was the principal person responsible for computer security (through a private company) for a county in Georgia. The county worked with various cities coordinating and providing 911 Emergency Response Services. When one city wanted to hook up to the county's 911 network, Moulten performed a port scan and throughput test on that city's network to see if the computers were vulnerable to exploit.

Facebook unethical experiment: It made news feeds happier or sadder to manipulate people's emotions.

slate.com

by Katy Waldman

June 28, 2014

It intentionally manipulated users' emotions without their knowledge.

Facebook has been experimenting on us. A new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals that Facebook intentionally manipulated the news feeds of almost 700,000 users in order to study "emotional contagion through social networks." The researchers, who are affiliated with Facebook, Cornell, and the University of California-San Francisco, tested whether reducing the number of positive messages people saw made those people less likely to post positive content themselves. The same went for negative messages: Would scrubbing posts with sad or angry words from someone's Facebook feed make that person write fewer gloomy updates?

Forensic science is biased and inaccurate, but juries believe it and convict the innocent.

slate.com

by Mark Joseph Stern

June 11, 2014

Why juries hear-and trust-so much biased, unreliable, inaccurate evidence.

Nine days before death row inmate Earl Washington's scheduled execution, his lawyers informed the state of Virginia that it was about to murder an innocent man. Forensic analysis of semen introduced at trial had convinced the jury that Washington, whose mental abilities matched those of a 10-year-old, had brutally raped and murdered a young woman in 1982. Washington's lawyers uncovered evidence that the analysis was faulty. The state halted the impending execution, and following a gubernatorial pardon, Washington was released from prison in 2001. He had been there for 17 years. How could forensic evidence, widely seen as factual and unbiased, nearly send an innocent person to his death? The answer is profoundly disturbing-and suggests that for every Earl Washington freed, untold more are sent to their deaths.

Scientists Have Figured Out How to Regenerate Teeth With Lasers.

slate.com

by Kevin Loria

May 31, 2014

Using lasers to regenerate and grow body parts sounds like science fiction, but researchers have just demonstrated that it might be a tranformative tool in medicine-or at least dentistry-in the future.

A Harvard-led team just successfully used low-powered lasers to activate stem cells and stimulate the growth of teeth in rats and human dental tissue in a lab. The results were published today in the journal Science Translational Medicine. Stem cells exist throughout the body, and they fascinate scientists because they have the ability to become different types of cells - which means they have the potential to repair or replace damaged or worn out tissue. Figuring out new ways to make them useful has long been a goal of medical researchers.

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