Hotels use RFID in bath towels
May 2, 2011 Leave a comment
Interesting use of RFID. Hotels are placing washable RFID in towels to prevent theft.
Experimental Design
April 26, 2011 Leave a comment
Excellent Communications of the ACM article on statistics and experimental design. In particular the use of likert scales and what that means for statistical testing choices.
Data Privacy Day Education Resources
March 22, 2011 Leave a comment
Here are a ton of privacy education resources for everyone from teens to adults. The materials were put up as part of Data Privacy Day 2011. They include everything from classroom lesson plans to educational videos to simple tips and tricks. Highly recommended for anyone trying to educate others on data privacy.
IE9 privacy features
March 17, 2011 Leave a comment
Lorrie Cranor has a nice blog post on the new privacy features of IE9.
My favorite Firefox add-ons
February 15, 2011 2 Comments
- Perspectives – Designed by a CMU research team, Perspectives asks and answers important information about self-signed security certificates. Self-signed security certificates are really only an issue if they are part of a man in the middle attack or put up by a malicious user. Thousands of legitimate websites use self signed certificates. Perspectives asks if 1) the same certificate can be seen by notaries in different parts of the internet? Aka: Is this a man-in-the-middle attack? 2) How long have the notaries been seeing this certificate? Aka: Is this a malicious website that was just setup?
- Ghostery – Tracks and notifies you about companies who are tracking you across the internet. It also gives you the choice to turn off their tracking cookies on a per company basis.
- Web Developer – A must have for anyone doing web design.
- Adblock Plus – Ok, I don’t always like seeing ads on the internet and this is a great way to block them. Also gives me the ability to turn ads on for websites I really want to support.
Updates:
- Firebug – An excellent plug-in for debugging web pages. Makes it easy to drill down on particular elements and make live changes to its style.
Who is responsible for securing confidential information?
January 27, 2011 Leave a comment
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found out last year that, in 2007, someone had hacked into a server holding personal information of 180,000 mammography patients from around the state. . . . . The university tried to fire — and is still trying to punish — the researcher who was in charge of the information.
Basically the school is trying to punish the researcher for failing to keep the data secure and the researcher is claiming that security isn’t her expertise. She did everything she knew to do but the university could have done a better job of providing her with support for keeping confidential information secure.
Update:
A resolution has been reached. The Professor in question is being reinstated as a full professor provided that she voluntarily retires.
Fun security ideas
January 25, 2011 Leave a comment
Can you spot all the security issues with this messy desk?
Its an interesting way to make security more “fun” by challenging people to think and find the problems instead of lecturing them about what to do right.
Security Conference Rankings
January 24, 2011 Leave a comment
Guofei Gu at Texas A&M University has a nice list of security conferences and what he believes their rankings are.
Current online privacy laws
January 4, 2011 Leave a comment
The service DeleteMe (@_DeleteMe_) has a nice Your Privacy Rights page about current and upcoming laws concerning computer related privacy.
DeleteMe is a service that assists people with deleting information online. Their webpage lists Facebook accounts and Myspace accounts as common requests along with getting added to the US national Do Not Call list.