Becoming a Tech Policy Activist

Carolyn McCarthy gave an excellent TEDx talk about becoming a tech policy activist. It's a powerful call for public-interest technologists...

Technology and Policymakers

Technologists and policymakers largely inhabit two separate worlds. It's an old problem, one that the British scientist CP Snow identified in a 1959 essay entitled The Two Cultures. He called them sciences and humanities, and pointed to the split as a major hindrance to solving the world's...

Why Technologists Need to Get Involved in Public Policy

Last month, I gave a 15-minute talk in London titled: "Why technologists need to get involved in public policy." In it, I try to make the case for public-interest technologists. I also maintain a public-interest tech resources page, which has pretty much everything I can find in this space. If I'...

Answering IoT Security Questions for CISOs

Given the permeating nature of IoT and Industrial IoT devices in our daily lives, from smart homes to smart cities, one cannot escape the growing cybersecurity risks associated with these devices. It might leave CISOs with a lot of questions about how this newer, growing attack vector could impac...

Debian DSA-4535-1 : e2fsprogs - security update

Lilith of Cisco Talos discovered a buffer overflow flaw in the quota code used by e2fsck from the ext2/ext3/ext4 file system utilities. Running e2fsck on a malformed file system can result in the execution of arbitrary code. C Tenable Network Security, Inc. The descriptive text and package checks...

I'm Looking to Hire a Strategist to Help Figure Out Public-Interest Tech

I am in search of a strategic thought partner: a person who can work closely with me over the next 9 to 12 months in assessing what's needed to advance the practice, integration, and adoption of public-interest technology. All of the details are in the RFP. The selected strategist will work close...

BlockDev Sp. Z o.o: Steal collateral during `end` process, by earning DSR interest after `flow`.

Summary: The end contract in MCD controls the process of shutting down the MCD contracts and allowing for users to redeem their DAI for collateral -- presumably to migrate to a new implementation of DAI. The process, however, doesn't prevent the continued functioniong of DAI savings accounts pot...

Black Hat 2019: Ethical Hackers Must Protect Digital Human Rights

LAS VEGAS – At a time when technology is being utilized for human-rights abuses, the security space needs to turn its focus to public interest defense technology, security stalwarts urged during Black Hat USA 2019. Security has long focused on protecting company data and providing cyber-defense f...

BlockDev Sp. Z o.o: Earn free DAI interest (inflation) through instant CDP+DSR in one tx

Summary: The MCD contracts contain different mechanisms for accumulating rates in different contracts, namely pot and jug corresponding to the cost of a loan and interest earned on savings. Because these rates are not synchronised, and depend on the call to the drip method to be calculated, it's...

Upcoming Speaking Engagements

This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak: I'm speaking at Black Hat USA 2019 in Las Vegas on Wednesday, August 7 and Thursday, August 8, 2019. I'm speaking on "Information Security in the Public Interest" at DefCon 27 in Las Vegas on Saturday, August 10, 2019. The list is...

Research on Human Honesty

New research from Science: "Civic honesty around the globe": Abstract: Civic honesty is essential to social capital and economic development, but is often in conflict with material self-interest. We examine the trade-off between honesty and self-interest using field experiments in 355 cities...

I'm Leaving IBM

Today is my last day at IBM. If you've been following along, IBM bought my startup Resilient Systems in Spring 2016. Since then, I have been with IBM, holding the nicely ambiguous title of "Special Advisor." As of the end of the month, I will be back on my own. I will continue to write and speak,...

Cybersecurity for the Public Interest

The Crypto Wars have been waging off-and-on for a quarter-century. On one side is law enforcement, which wants to be able to break encryption, to access devices and communications of terrorists and criminals. On the other are almost every cryptographer and computer security expert, repeatedly...

Videos and Links from the Public-Interest Technology Track at the RSA Conference

Yesterday at the RSA Conference, I gave a keynote talk about the role of public-interest technologists in cybersecurity. Video here. I also hosted a one-day mini-track on the topic. We had six panels, and they were all great. If you missed it live, we have videos: How Public Interest Technologist...

Cybersecurity for the Public Interest

The Crypto Wars have been waging off-and-on for a quarter-century. On one side is law enforcement, which wants to be able to break encryption, to access devices and communications of terrorists and criminals. On the other are almost every cryptographer and computer security expert, repeatedly...

RSAC 2019: An Antidote for Tech Gone Wrong

SAN FRANCISCO – Tech innovation can move faster than its own good might dictate, often leaving the public interest as an afterthought. Take, for example, hot-button topics such as artificial intelligence, network neutrality and social network user privacy – and consider the ensuing debates. The...

Video: HackerOne CEO on the Evolving Bug Bounty Landscape

The bug bounty landscape continues to change along with the concept and rules around vulnerability disclosure. Meanwhile, companies such as GitHub, Microsoft and others continue to keep pace, launching or expanding bounty programs. Even the European Commission is getting in on the action. On...

Public-Interest Tech at the RSA Conference

Our work in cybersecurity is inexorably intertwined with public policy and­ -- more generally­ -- the public interest. It's obvious in the debates on encryption and vulnerability disclosure, but it's also part of the policy discussions about the Internet of Things, cryptocurrencies, artificial...

Debian DSA-4263-1 : cgit - security update

Jann Horn discovered a directory traversal vulnerability in cgit, a fast web frontend for git repositories written in C. A remote attacker can take advantage of this flaw to retrieve arbitrary files via a specially crafted request, when 'enable-http-clone=1' default is not turned off. C Tenable...

A study of car sharing apps

The growing popularity of car sharing services has led some experts to predict an end to private car ownership in big cities. The statistics appear to back up this claim: for example, in 2017 Moscow saw the car sharing fleet, the number of active users and the number of trips they made almost...