Ross Anderson, a British professor who was recently denied entrance to the US, well-known for his extensive background in cryptography and computer security research, is in the process of writing a new edition of his book on computer security engineering. So far, the preface and two chapters of Security Engineering, 3rd edition are online available for review. Other chapters will follow online as well. The first and second editions will remain available too.
Today I put online a chapter on Who is the Opponent, which draws together what we learned from Snowden and others about the capabilities of state actors, together with what we've learned about cybercrime actors as a result of running the Cambridge Cybercrime Centre. Isn't it odd that almost six years after Snowden, nobody's tried to pull together what we learned into a coherent summary?
There's also a chapter on Surveillance or Privacy which looks at policy. What's the privacy landscape now, and what might we expect from the tussles over data retention, government backdoors and censorship more generally?
Earlier on SN:
Sustainable Security for Durable Goods (2018)
Daniel Stenberg, Author of cURL and libcurl, Denied US Visit Again (2018)
Related Stories
Ross Anderson in the Security Group at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory asks some questions about whether durable goods such as cars can be Internet-connected and yet provide sufficient privacy and safety. It's not a deep discussion but it does raise a few other pertainent questions.
Perhaps the biggest challenge will be durability. At present we have a hard time patching a phone that's three years old. Yet the average age of a UK car at scrappage is about 14 years, and rising all the time; cars used to last 100,000 miles in the 1980s but now keep going for nearer 200,000. As the embedded carbon cost of a car is about equal to that of the fuel it will burn over its lifetime, we just can't afford to scrap cars after five years, as do we laptops.
Meters and medical devices are two more examples of hardware that can cause great harm when control of the integrated software is taken over by malfeasants.
Source : Making security sustainable.
and Making Security Sustainable: Can there be an Internet of durable goods? (warning for PDF)
Daniel Stenberg, author of the ubiquitous URL fetcher cURL and the libcurl multiprotocol file transfer library, and recipient of the 2017 Polheim Prize, has been blocked again from attending a US-based conference. Daniel has written a post in his blog about his two-year odyssey through the byzantine US bureaucracy to try to get permission to attend a work-related conference in California. He has been in the US nine times previously but despite pages of paperwork, hundreds of dollars in fees, and personal visits to the embassy, no dice. As a result the conference will have to move outside the US and probably Canada too if it wants to stay open to the world's top talent.
Earlier on SN:
US Visa Applications May Soon Require Five Years of Social Media Info (2018)
Reducing Year 2038 Problems in curl (2018)
cURL turns Seventeen Today (2015)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 21 2019, @03:15PM
For the time being, there will be no progress in privacy and other civil liberties, unless we can develop bulletproof technology to protect us from each other. We can start with the internet connection. We need something that can't be taken down.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday May 21 2019, @04:34PM
... His draft chapters will be taken down (except for 7) when the book is published, for 42 months then it becomes free. Given that one does need current editions but that should give some window for the knowledge to be public.
Aside from that, why would 6 years be a surprise? It took about 20 years for the Holocaust to begin to be discussed seriously, and 5-10 years for Vietnam to begin to be summarized. If there's any change it is that the we expect the length of time to make sense of large and dramatic events to have reduced significantly.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday May 21 2019, @06:29PM
Perusing the chapters makes for very good summary reading so far.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 22 2019, @08:55PM
haven't heard of this.