Month: December 2014
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Consensus in Bitcoin: One system, many models
At a technical level, the Bitcoin protocol is a clever solution to the consensus problem in computer science. The idea of consensus is very general — a number of participants together execute a computation to come to agreement about the state of the world, or a subset of it that they’re interested in. Because of…
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On the Sony Pictures Security Breach
The recent security breach at Sony Pictures is one of the most embarrassing breaches ever, though not the most technically sophisticated. The incident raises lots of interesting questions about the current state of security and public policy.
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Why ASICs may be good for Bitcoin
Bitcoin mining is now almost exclusively performed by Bitcoin-specific ASICs (application-specific integrated circuits). These chips are made by a few startup manufacturers and cannot be used for anything else besides mining Bitcoin or closely related cryptocurrencies [1]. Because they are somewhere between a thousand and a million times more efficient at mining Bitcoin than a…
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Striking a balance between advertising and ad blocking
In the news, we have a consortium of French publishers, which somehow includes several major U.S. corporations (Google, Microsoft), attempting to sue AdBlock Plus developer Eyeo, a German firm with developers around the world. I have no idea of the legal basis for their case, but it’s all about the money. AdBlock Plus and the closely…
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Expert Panel Report: A New Governance Model for Communications Security?
Today, the vulnerable state of electronic communications security dominates headlines across the globe, while surveillance, money and power increasingly permeate the ‘cybersecurity’ policy arena. With the stakes so high, how should communications security be regulated? Deirdre Mulligan (UC Berkeley), Ashkan Soltani (independent, Washington Post), Ian Brown (Oxford) and Michel van Eeten (TU Delft) weighed in on…
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"Information Sharing" Should Include the Public
The FBI recently issued a warning to U.S. businesses about the possibility of foreign-based malware attacks. According to a Reuters story by Jim Finkle: The five-page, confidential “flash” FBI warning issued to businesses late on Monday provided some technical details about the malicious software used in the attack. It provided advice on how to respond…