Weekend Reads 070921


A long-standing, generally accepted norm in the computing field distinguishes between software interfaces and implementations: Programmers should have to write their own implementing code, but they should be free to reimplement other developers’ program interfaces.


The traditional approach to statistical disclosure control (SDC) for privacy protection is utility-first. Since the 1970s, national statistical institutes have been using anonymization methods with heuristic parameter choice and suitable utility preservation properties to protect data before release.


Shared libraries encourage code reuse, promote consistency across teams, and ultimately improve product velocity and quality. But application developers are still left to choose the right libraries, figure out how to correctly configure them, and wire everything together.


When October 5 came, there was no vulnerability advisory being published and I still had not heard a CVSS or CVE for the issue, so I reached out again to their PSIRT who this time replied that the release had been postponed until October 14th now due to a delay in QA.


Organizations relying on traditional signature-based tools to detect security threats would likely have missed roughly three-quarters of malware samples that hit their networks and systems last quarter, a new analysis shows.


But as attacks have increased in scope and sophistication, so have we. Microsoft has a clear vision for how to help protect our customers now and in the future and we know our approach works.


PolarProxy is a transparent TLS proxy that outputs decrypted TLS traffic as PCAP files. PolarProxy doesn’t interfere with the tunnelled data in any way, it simply takes the incoming TLS stream, decrypts it, re-encrypts it and forwards it to the destination.


Google has launched an updated version of Scorecards, its automated security tool that produces a “risk score” for open source initiatives, with improved checks and capabilities to make the data generated by the utility accessible for analysis.


Scammers are increasingly resourceful when coming up with scam techniques. But they often rely on long-standing persuasion techniques for the scam to work


Now one researcher has found a collection of bugs that allow him to hack ATMs—along with a wide variety of point-of-sale terminals—in a new way: with a wave of his phone over a contactless credit card reader.


There was an outside chance that China might pull a surprise on the HPC community and launch the first true exascale system – meaning capable of more than 1 exaflops of peak theoretical 64-bit floating point performance if you want to be generous, and 1 exaflops sustained on the High Performance Linpack (HPL) benchmark if you don’t – but that didn’t happen. And so, we wait.


These days, it’s not a matter if your password will be breached but when. Major websites experience massive data breaches at an alarming rate.


When we talk about supporting a global Internet, it’s important to remember that the majority of the world does not speak English as a first language.


It’s well known the code is buggy; that’s why software updates for anything from apps to operating systems are now the norm. But if the public understands this, the courts have not followed suit.


A lack of transparency and accountability are, without a doubt, the most substantial supply chain-specific security threats to the United States. These threats lead to underinformed end users and inequitable distribution of risk in global technology value chains.