Enbody on Computing

Next in tech?

2016-09-30T08:56:00.000-04:00

How does a company like Google stay competitive as its core business of web advertising change? One possibility is to combine its vast knowledge gained from watching searches for 17 years with AI (artificial intelligence) to create a device that can "do things" rather than simply search. It began with the ability to answer questions as an extension of search. The new goal is to consider all the parameters and book the flight you want, i.e. figure it all out. Or combine with others to schedule a meeting without human intervention. http://www.nytimes.com/ If you have sold your soul to Google so that it knows everything about you, e.g. through that Android phone you are carrying around, try stretching the abilities of Google Now -- it is impressively capable at successfully responding to spoken questions.

Secure Software

2016-09-25T08:59:00.002-04:00

We have known for a long time that formal verification was possible in small pieces of code — that is, provably correct code (no bugs). Well, embedded systems tend to have small code. As a result, DARPA is finding success from a security standpoint in formally verified code. The scenario is a formally verified helicopter delivery drone that attackers were unable to compromise even after providing exceptional access. The article is nice because it explains the success and challenges. It is entirely possible that embedded security such as vehicle security will be formal verification. https://www.wired.com/

Exoskeleton

2016-09-23T16:14:00.002-04:00

Here is a different take on an exoskeleton from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich Switzerland: https://www.ethz.ch/ They wrap an exoskeleton around limbs with limited functionality and control them using a patient's own brain. The example used here wraps the exoskeleton around the back of a hand allowing the hand to do the grasping assisted by the robot.

Tera-bit Internet

2016-09-21T17:01:00.002-04:00

Nokia claims it will demonstrate tera-bit internet (http://www.zdnet.com/). That would be 1,000 times faster than Google fiber and 10 times faster (or more) than the current internet backbone. One thing to note is that the fiber itself isn't changing. A strand of fiber is basically as pure as possible so the changes come at the ends where you put (and take) signals on the fiber. In this case, they are tuning multiple wavelengths to be more efficient so they can carry more information.

Scanning + Computing reads ancient burned Biblical scroll

2016-09-21T17:01:00.001-04:00

The video in this article (http://gizmodo.com/) describes how scans are processed in software to extract readable text from a piece of charcoal that was once a Biblical scroll. They first determined the layers that represented the rolled up scroll. Because the ink was denser than the scroll skin the ink showed up as brighter pixels on the layers revealing characters.

The text was Leviticus -- now the oldest version found. Leviticus has such gems as "love your neighbor as yourself," but also "don't wear clothing made of two kinds of material" and many other things not to do. It also has a darker side when it was used to justify slavery.

Hacking a secured iPhone

2016-09-19T15:22:00.002-04:00

In the aftermath of the San Bernadino shootings last year the FBI was unable to hack past the security of an iPhone and demanded that Apple break their own security. A security firm stepped forward and used a hardware attack to circumvent entry. How did they do it? Here is a high level description of what security researchers did -- likely similar to what the security firm did: http://www.bbc.com/

The problem is that after too many failed attempts to enter a passcode the phone will permanently shut down. The challenge is to remove the attempt limit so all possible passcodes can be tried -- the passcode on that phone was only 4 numbers (new phones require 6 which is considerably more guesses). The trick was to find the memory chip that stored the count and replace it with a new chip with a zeroed count before the limit was reached (much harder to do than it sounds). It is a laborious process, but it can be done.

Comparing an iPhone to the "first" supercomputer

2016-09-17T15:06:00.001-04:00

I just got an iPhone 7 (switched from Android) so phone computing power is on my mind.

Linpack is a set of linear algebra routines used frequently in scientific computing for decades so it provides a way to compare new computers to very old ones.

The Cray-1 supercomputer of 1979, sometimes referred to as the "first" supercomputer. It cost $9 million in 1979 dollars ($26 million today), had 1 MegaByte of memory, weighed 5.5 tons, and required 115 KWatts of power. It ran the linpack benchmark at 3.4 Mflops (million floating point operations per second). The iPhone 6+ ran linpack at 180 Mflops on similar data -- the phone actually runs faster on larger matrices. So the iPhone 6 is roughly 60 times faster. And it fits in your pocket.

The Cray-1 was a milestone for weather prediction because it was the first computer that could do a 24-hour weather prediction in less than 24 hours (only a little less so it still wasn't useful at first).

ATM Skimmer

2016-09-14T21:02:00.000-04:00

An ATM skimmer is a device that thieves attach to an ATM machine to read ("skim") the magnetic stripe on the ATM card. Usually they are installed on the outside of the ATM machine and a wary eye can spot them. A new "periscope" skimmer has been found in the wild that is installed inside the ATM -- it requires the thief to have a key to open the ATM for installation. See http://krebsonsecurity.com/ for details. What can you do to defend yourself? The skimmer cannot read the PIN you type in -- that is usually read with a tiny camera. The defense is simple: use one hand to cover the PIN pad while you enter the PIN with the other hand. Secondarily, be wary of ATM machines that are not owned by a bank -- try to use bank ATMs built into a wall.

Robots

2016-09-14T20:57:00.000-04:00

IEEE regularly posts videos of robots http://spectrum.ieee.org/ I find exoskeletons and prostheses fascinating. Here is a video of a new leg prothesis from that site: https://www.youtube.com

Teams

2016-09-05T20:48:00.001-04:00

Most (all?) of you will work on teams in school and on the job. What makes an effective team has been a vexing question. Here is a long, but excellent article http://www.nytimes.com/ Psychological safety is important -- feeling comfortable to express your ideas. Also, the ability to feel empathy for others is important -- effectively what is called "Emotional IQ".

Hardware hack

2016-08-31T11:12:00.000-04:00

Most operating systems use a single bit to indicate whether a process is privileged (e.g. admin, root) or not. If you can flip that bit, you can change a process from unprivileged ('normal') to privileged ('superman') giving you total access to a computer. An attack named "Rowhammer" will hammer a row of bits in memory causing spillover into a neighboring row and flip bits. By selectively choosing a row you can flip the "privilege" bit in a neighboring row. Here is a nice article describing Rowhammer and recent variants: https://www.wired.com/

Sensing key strokes remotely

2016-08-30T13:25:00.002-04:00

Side channel attacks involve using indirect methods to extract data. In this case, the researchers used perturbations of Wi-Fi signals from hand movement to accurately detect keys being typed -- allowing one to remotely detect typing, e.g. to steal passwords. Similar attacks exist such as the rhythm of key strokes from key-clicking sounds or screen refreshes from key strokes. A summary can be found here: https://www.schneier.com/

How a computer adds

2016-08-28T10:35:00.003-04:00

Addition is the basis of all arithmetic in a computer. Subtraction is adding a negative number, multiplication is repeated addition, and division is a combination of the others. Of course, a computer uses binary numbers (digits 0 and 1 rather than digits 0 through 9). This video describes how a binary adder circuit can be built using dominoes -- mirroring what actually happens in a computer. The result is an easy-to-grasp description of computer arithmetic: https://www.youtube.com/

Lidar on a chip

2016-08-18T15:37:00.002-04:00

Autonomous vehicles use laser range finders (lidar) to map their surroundings, often combined with radar. Radar units are relatively small and inexpensive with no moving parts, but lidar has tended to be large and expensive (e.g. $70,000) with moving parts (something to break down). They are the large, rotating objects on autonomous vehicle roofs. MIT working with DARPA has shrunk lidar to a chip with no moving parts and a projected cost of $10 each -- a massive improvement: http://spectrum.ieee.org/

Spoofing GPS

2016-08-12T12:17:00.002-04:00

I am interested in malicious interference in vehicles and a related issue is the spoofing of sensors that are increasing in vehicles. GPS mapping is common and http://spectrum.ieee.org/ has an article on how to spoof GPS. The short version is that a signal is broadcast that overrides the true signal -- the hard part is to do it in a way that cannot be easily detected by the GPS receiver. Doing so involves manipulating the pseudo-random noise code (PNC) that is contained in the true GPS signal whose purpose is to distinguish among the multiple GPS satellites used for positioning.

Quantum cryptographic communication

2016-08-12T10:18:00.001-04:00

The word "quantum" gets attached to multiple, very different technologies related to cryptography leading to confusion. The main two to date are the quantum computer (which has the capability to crack the asymmetric cryptography that underpins the internet) and quantum key distribution (which uses quantum characteristics of photons to securely distribute a symmetric, cryptographic key over an optical fiber). Now we have a third: quantum, cryptographically-secured communication. Rather than simply sharing a key as in quantum key distribution, here an entangled photon is used a the key so an eavesdropper intercepting the key will disturb the key rendering the communication indecipherable to everyone, especially the eavesdropper. It is not an existing technology, but the target of recent NSF funding: http://www.nsf.gov/

ATM hack using new EMV cards

2016-08-05T11:08:00.002-04:00

The new credit cards in the US now have the EMV chips that have been common elsewhere. They make transactions more secure than the old mag-stripe cards which were easier to duplicate. However, they are not perfect. In this attack the point-of-sale (POS) terminal has a "shimmer" installed inside it which sits between the credit card and the POS hardware -- the classic "man-in-the-middle" attack. At some distant location is an ATM machine with an "out-of-order" sign on it. The ATM has a smartphone that the "shimmer" communicates with to share the information that it is snooping while the credit card's EMV chip at the POS terminal is communicating with the banking system. The "out-of-order" ATM has a device to emulate the EMV's communication as well as mechanical servos to push buttons. Using the information from the "shimmer" a transaction is approved, the servos push buttons, and ATM throws out cash. The link (http://www.eweek.com/) includes a brief video of a demonstration.

Hotel door locks can be hacked.

2016-08-05T10:50:00.002-04:00

It has been known that one brand of hotel lock, Onity, could be easily hacked by plugging into its power port that's on every lock (http://www.computerworld.com/). At this year's Black Hat an upgraded attack can unlock all the doors in a hotel, including creating a maid's master card. You scan one card to identify the fields and then brute force the relevant fields (http://www.computerworld.com/). The solution is old-school: jamb a chair under the door knob or carry a door stop to jamb under the door.

How to Hack an Election

2016-08-03T13:58:00.003-04:00

There is an interesting article in http://www.bloomberg.com/ on a guy who claims to have hacked a number of Central and South American elections. Basically it is "dirty tricks" using 21st century technology: accessing opponent's data and communication, setting up rumor campaigns on Twitter, etc.

NIST no longer recommends TFA on SMS

2016-08-03T12:37:00.000-04:00

"NIST no longer recommends TFA on SMS" -- lots of acronyms! NIST is the National Institute of Standards and Technology. TFA is two-factor authentication and SMS is the common way texting is done on a smartphone. TFA requires a second item when logging in, e.g. for Gmail you enter your name and password which triggers Google to send a text (SMS) which a code that you also enter -- two factors: password and texted code. In this way, if someone has stolen your password, they will be unable to log in unless they also stole and accessed your phone. SMS fails in multiple ways. One is a malware app on the phone. Another is social engineering (conning) the phone company to yield access to the phone. I believe that the latter has been more common than the former. TFA can also be done with an authenticator app on the phone and that is still recommended by NIST. For example, Google has an authenticator app.

Don't change your passwords!

2016-08-02T20:35:00.002-04:00

Growing research indicates that mandated, frequent password changes result in passwords that users create an algorithm for. The end result is a predictable password that is easier to crack. A nice overview is here: http://arstechnica.com/security/

Recreating a dead man's finger for a fingerprint reader

2016-07-21T13:19:00.000-04:00

Police asked Dr. Jain's PRIP lab in MSU's CSE Department to create a 3-D finger of a dead man so they could access his phone because they believe the phone has clues to who murdered him. One challenge is that the fingerprint reader has a sensor to detect if the finger is live. http://fusion.net/

Nanosecond

2016-07-21T13:07:00.002-04:00

Here is a classic that I came across on the Internet. I hadn't seen it in a long while: Admiral Grace Hopper explaining a nanosecond: https://www.youtube.com

Robotic touch

2016-07-20T11:50:00.001-04:00

Computer vision has a long history, especially in CSE at MSU, and it is quite sophisticated, but touch will be needed to advance robotics (nice overview here: http://spectrum.ieee.org/). As an example, check out this article (http://spectrum.ieee.org/) on the recent Amazon picking challenge where a robot does the current human task of putting items on shelves or selecting from shelves to place in a bin (box). The winner from Delft does a good job, but is quite slow. A common way to pick an object is to use suction, but that doesn't work on everything so the Delft robot has a second grasping "hand." Amazon currently uses a lot of automation (check out the clever Kiva warehouse robots: https://www.youtube.com/), but they still need humans for picking. Our robotic overloads can't replace that human task. Yet.

Carbon nanotube circuits

2016-07-14T14:06:00.002-04:00

Current (FET) transistors have driven the computer age nearly since its inception. In spite of their death having been predicted many times, they are finally reaching their limits -- physics is a hard limit. Transistors based on carbon nanotubes have been an elusive potential substitute. This http://spectrum.ieee.org/ article gives a nice overview of the state of the art and indicates that significant progress is being made. A small 178 transistor circuit that runs has been demonstrated -- even though small that is non-trivial. One point confuses me: transistors have two properties, they are a switch and they amplify. Amplification with carbon nanotubes has been an issue and is not mentioned in the article. Is is so obviously solved that it need not be mentioned or is this optimistic article ignoring that point?