Computer Science Professor Stefan Savage on Computer Security and Online Data

Stefan Savage, a professor in the computer science department, was invited to contribute a piece in the New York Times' feature "Essays on Computing," now online in the paper's Science section and out in hard copy tomorrow.

Some eye-opening excerpts from the essay are below. The full text can be found here.

"We can expect new threats to directly reflect each new technical innovation in how money is used, moved and stored. Emerging cellphone-based payment systems, automated banking transfers and the increasingly liquid markets for online goods in multiplayer games will all be ripe targets for online crooks."

"The ease with which we adopt online personas and relationships has created a collective blind spot that computer technology is well suited to exploit. Advances in natural-language processing and data mining make it entirely feasible to mint millions of “social bots,” each establishing online friendships with their targets like virtual con men, each building trust over time and delivering personalized messages designed to elicit information, sway opinion or call to action.
This idea, which one of my colleagues has called “social architecture,” completely upends traditional computer security concerns: The threat is not of humans controlling or monitoring our computers, but precisely the converse."

"The Stuxnet worm, designed to sabotage gas centrifuges in Iran, made it clear that computer attacks can have physical, real-world consequences — a particularly troubling precedent because computing capabilities are now embedded in virtually every aspect of our lives. The power we use, the water we drink, the cars, planes and trains we travel in, the elevators and air-conditioning in our buildings, even many of our children’s toys — all are controlled by computers.
A parallel trend, fueled by cheap wireless connectivity, is that these devices are increasingly networked. And while few of these systems have been attacked in anger, it is this very fact that leads most of them to be rife with vulnerabilities — a sheltered ecosystem with no immunity to attacks from an outside invader"

Also, Larry Smarr, director of Calit2 and a computer science professor here at the Jacobs School, wrote an essay for the same feature, titled "An Evolution Toward a Programmable Universe." Read it here.

Where in the United States are the Jacobs School's Zero-Pressure Balloons?

Three teams taking an introductory aerospace engineering course this quarter got a unique opportunity last week: they launched three balloons, for which they designed payload and instrumentation.
The students were hoping the balloons would make it to the East Coast. But the ferocious windstorm that blew through the Southwest derailed their plans.
One balloon landed about 50 miles east of Yuma, Ariz., and was recovered by local residents. Another landed 120 miles south of Ensenada, in Mexico, and was also at a local home. Finally, the third balloon touched down 40 miles east of Kingman, Ariz. It's in a remote mountain area, so Kosmatka plans to contact a local Boy Scout troop to help recover it.
The students' efforts were profiled in this San Diego Union-Tribune story.
Also, read our story on the Jacobs School website.