technology

The feds pay for 60 percent of Tor’s development. Can users trust it?

"The NSA’s sustained attempt to get around encryption calls into question many of the technologies people have come to rely on to avoid surveillance. One indispensable tool is Tor, the anonymizing service that takes a user’s Internet traffic and spits it out from some other place on the Web so that its origin is obscured. So far there’s no hard evidence that the government has compromised the anonymity of Tor traffic. But some on a Tor-related e-mail list recently pointed out that a substantial chunk of the Tor Project’s 2012 operating budget came from the Department of Defense, which houses the NSA." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingThe feds pay for 60 percent of Tor’s development. Can users trust it?

Orange County, CA Still Has No Tax Software

"The tax code of Orange County is so complex that the documentation for an useless computer program to run the tax system is 6,000 pages long. The program did not work. The county then hired another firm to produce the needed program. Original bid: $8 million. But there were cost overruns: another $8 million. The county says the second program does not work. The company is part of the Tata conglomerate, the giant Indian firm. Orange County has fired Tata. So, the county is still flying blind." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingOrange County, CA Still Has No Tax Software

Nasty Gal: From eBay To Multimillion-Dollar Company In Seven Years

"I'm a capitalist, I'm a CEO, I run a big business, I'm an employer,' says Sophia Amoruso, the 29-year-old head of Nasty Gal, the online fashion retail empire that she transformed from an eBay vintage store into a $240 million company in just seven years. 'But it's all secondary to the way it happened, because I could be anything.' What Amoruso has created is a sizeable niche business in the high-margin fast-fashion space. Her company sells edgy, retro-inspired looks at reasonable prices—$50 tops, $70 dresses—and some actual vintage items to a rabidly loyal customer base of young women, frothed up by almost constant social media interaction." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingNasty Gal: From eBay To Multimillion-Dollar Company In Seven Years

Elon Musk’s New Hologram Project Invites ‘Iron Man’ Comparisons

"In the 'Iron Man' trilogy, billionaire inventor Tony Stark uses a gesture-controlled hologram to draft new designs of the titular armor, sending virtual parts flying around his lab with the flick of a wrist. Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk—who is often compared to Stark by the tech press—is apparently creating the real-life equivalent of that fictional hologram system. 'We figured out how to design rocket parts just w hand movements through the air (seriously),' he Tweeted August 23. 'Now need a high frame rate holograph generator.' In a follow-up Tweet, he added: 'Will post video next week of designing a rocket part with hand gestures & then immediately printing it in titanium.'" Continue reading →

Continue ReadingElon Musk’s New Hologram Project Invites ‘Iron Man’ Comparisons

How Millennials will shape the future of work

"92 percent of Millennials believe that business should be measured by more than just profit and should focus on a societal purpose. Millennials want the flexibility to work from home and make their own hours. A Cisco study shows that 70 percent of students believe it is unnecessary to be in an office regularly. Millennials will make working from home or from shared office spaces the norm — goodbye cubicles! The New York Times reports that the average amount of office space per employees in the U.S. has already dropped from 400 square feet to 250 and in the future will be reduced to 150. The idea that we’ll be walking into a major office building will face away." Continue reading →

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Bitcoin developer: Are bitcoin thieves revealing NSA back doors?

"Will bitcoin -- and the financial incentive to break bitcoin crypto -- reveal other NSA backdoors in ECDSA, SHA256, RIPEMD160, and other algorithms and libraries used by bitcoin? Thieves are likely to exploit any flaws immediately, and move stolen loot to another private key. The NSA, on the other hand, is likely to avoid exploiting any weaknesses until key moments. Thus, ironically, thieves are playing a role in securing bitcoin and associated algorithms from NSA, Chinese, Russian or mafia tampering. Was the SecureRandom() bug a now-revealed NSA backdoor? You can thank bitcoin for exposing the problem and leading to immediate fixes, and attention to weak RNG impact." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingBitcoin developer: Are bitcoin thieves revealing NSA back doors?

Toshiba’s quantum cryptography network that even the NSA can’t hack

"A quantum network uses specially polarized photons to encode an encryption key—a very long series of numbers and letters that can unlock a digital file. The photons are then sent down a fiber optic cable until they reach their destination, a photon detector, which counts them, and delivers the key to the intended recipient. If the photons are interfered with, the individual packets of information are forever altered and the recipient can see the telltale signs of tampering. The next step toward mainstreaming quantum crypto is increasing the distance that photons can travel before they degrade—currently the record is 200 km (124 miles) using a dedicated fiber optic cable." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingToshiba’s quantum cryptography network that even the NSA can’t hack

Schneier on NSA surveillance: A guide to staying secure

"Now that we have enough details about how the NSA eavesdrops on theinternet, including today's disclosures of the NSA's deliberate weakening of cryptographic systems, we can finally start to figure out how to protect ourselves. The NSA has turned the fabric of the internet into a vast surveillance platform, but they are not magical. They're limited by the same economic realities as the rest of us, and our best defense is to make surveillance of us as expensive as possible. Trust the math. Encryption is your friend. Use it well, and do your best to ensure that nothing can compromise it. That's how you can remain secure even in the face of the NSA." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingSchneier on NSA surveillance: A guide to staying secure

What Exactly Are the NSA’s ‘Groundbreaking Cryptanalytic Capabilities’?

"Whatever the NSA has up its top-secret sleeves, the mathematics of cryptography will still be the most secure part of any encryption system. I worry a lot more about poorly designed cryptographic products, software bugs, bad passwords, companies that collaborate with the NSA to leak all or part of the keys, and insecure computers and networks. Those are where the real vulnerabilities are, and where the NSA spends the bulk of its efforts. While the NSA certainly has symmetric cryptanalysis capabilities that we in the academic world do not, converting that into practical attacks on the sorts of data it is likely to encounter seems so impossible as to be fanciful." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingWhat Exactly Are the NSA’s ‘Groundbreaking Cryptanalytic Capabilities’?

Schneier: US gov. has betrayed the internet. We need to take it back

"Government and industry have betrayed the internet, and us. By subverting the internet at every level to make it a vast, multi-layered and robust surveillance platform, the NSA has undermined a fundamental social contract. The companies that build and manage our internet infrastructure, the companies that create and sell us our hardware and software, or the companies that host our data: we can no longer trust them to be ethical internet stewards. This is not the internet the world needs, or the internet its creators envisioned. We need to take it back. And by we, I mean the engineering community." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingSchneier: US gov. has betrayed the internet. We need to take it back