The Security Value of Inefficiency

For decades, we have prized efficiency in our economy. We strive for it. We reward it. In normal times, that's a good thing. Running just at the margins is efficient. A single just-in-time global supply chain is efficient. Consolidation is efficient. And that's all profitable. Inefficiency, on th...

CVE-2018-6922

One of the data structures that holds TCP segments in all versions of FreeBSD prior to 11.2-RELEASE-p1, 11.1-RELEASE-p12, and 10.4-RELEASE-p10 uses an inefficient algorithm to reassemble the data. This causes the CPU time spent on segment processing to grow linearly with the number of segments in...

Nicholas Weaver on Cryptocurrencies

This is well-worth reading non-paywalled version. Here's the opening: Cryptocurrencies, although a seemingly interesting idea, are simply not fit for purpose. They do not work as currencies, they are grossly inefficient, and they are not meaningfully distributed in terms of trust. Risks involving...

OpenJDK: inefficient use of hash tables and lists during XML parsing (JAXP, 8068842)

Unspecified vulnerability in Oracle Java SE 6u101, 7u85, and 8u60; Java SE Embedded 8u51; and JRockit R28.3.7 allows remote attackers to affect availability via vectors related to JAXP, a different vulnerability than CVE-2015-4893 and CVE-2015-4911...

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS / 12.10 / 13.04 : nova vulnerabilities (USN-2000-1)

It was discovered that Nova did not properly enforce the ispublic property when determining flavor access. An authenticated attacker could exploit this to obtain sensitive information in private flavors. This issue only affected Ubuntu 12.10 and 13.10. CVE-2013-2256, CVE-2013-4278 Grant Murphy...