Category Archives: Ethics
Absent student forfeits raffle
Here at the University of Washington CSE Department we often have events called Tech Talks, where guest companies come in and give a demonstration of their technologies and expertise. Last night we had a tech talk given by Palantir Technologies, a very promising-looking company that aims to transform the way people work with large data sets by making it easier to discover and visualizing trends and connections in the ever-accumulating mountains of data generated by our modern technological culture. And at the end of the evening they planned to raffle off an iPod touch. Continue reading
Storm worm cracked, but defenses may not fly
The Storm worm, noticed for the first time on January 17th, 2007, is one of the more notorious worms of the last few years. Targetted initially towards individual Windows machines, victims were often infected after receiving a bait e-mail with … Continue reading
Security Review: Security and Privacy Code of Ethics
The Security and Privacy Code of Ethics is a contract that every CSE484 student is required to sign, on penalty of a zero grade in the course. It places restrictions on the manner in which students may use knowledge gained … Continue reading
Ethics…?
This blog post on freedom-to-tinker came up in my feed reader today: http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1265 The post is an e-mail from a company that makes e-voting machines that is threatening legal action if their voting machine is analyzed and the results published. … Continue reading
Security Review: The Human Heart
As our professor has continually emphasized throughout the quarter, one of the primary aims of our course has been to go beyond technical details of current computer security in order to learn the security mindset. This new way of thinking … Continue reading
Current Events: British Police Want DNA of Children
From The Guardian, and on Slashdot. Police in the United Kingdom may soon be be able to collect DNA samples from children if they exhibit behaviors that suggest they may commit crimes later in life, at least if Scotland Yard … Continue reading
Security Review: Apple iPhone 3rd party application support
On Thursday, Apple happily unveiled its plan for third party support of native iPhone applications. The plan involves an application development and distribution pipeline including an iPhone SDK, a suite of IDE tools, and a sales and distribution plan through … Continue reading
The Goolag Scanner and Google Hacking
Bruce Schneier posted on his blog earlier in the week about a new, free, open source application by the “Cult of the Dead Cow” (cDc) called Goolag Scanner. It essentially automates a technique called Google Hacking, which was pioneered by … Continue reading
Facebook storing your information
While this may not be breaking news, it turns out that Facebook has taken just one more step in not respecting their user’s privacy. According to a semi-recent article in the New York Times, Facebook retains user profile information even after the … Continue reading
Google to Store Patient Health Data
News article here, covered on Slashdot here. Google, with the cooperation of the Cleveland Clinic, is beginning a project to record medical history and other health-related data for patients. The stated goal is to provide patients with a way to … Continue reading