Communications of the ACM articles from July 1999

Communications of the ACM archives from July 1999

News Track.(News Briefs)
July 1, 1999... VULNERABLE CRYPTO CODE The design of a device that could quickly unscramble computer-generated code that until now has been considered secure was presented in Prague by one of the world's foremost cryptographers, Adi Shamir, coinventor of...

Certification or Decertification?(Letter to the Editor)
July 1, 1999... IN THE APRIL VIEWPOINT ("Taking the Lead in Licensing Software Engineers," p. 27), Donald Bagert trots out the old chestnut about the need to certify software engineers. Licensing and certification are such dimwitted ideas that if Texas...

Correction.(Brief Article)(Letter to the Editor)
July 1, 1999... I FOUND THE ARTICLES IN THE May 1999 Communications very interesting. They have relevance to almost everything we do here at American Honda. In the article, "Understanding The Seductive Experience" (p. 45), there is a misspelling of the...

Telecom Act, Scene One.(Industry Trend or Event)
July 1, 1999... The phone rings constantly. I get lots of mail. And tecommunications companies of all shapes and sizes, from all geographical areas, want me to be a member of their special customer family. I've been chosen. And I'm honored, really. In fact, so...

Infowar: AK-47s, Lies, and Videotape.(Technology Information)
July 1, 1999... Information warfare is not just about "hacker war." Infowar is far broader and requires a much deeper reform of national security than simply adding a few thousand well-paid sysadmins. Throughout the continuing wars in Rwanda and what was...

The Need for Speed.(high-speed Internet access technology)(Technology Information)
July 1, 1999... Experiences with consumer-oriented, high-speed Internet access technology. One of the limiting Internet growth factors in the consumer area is the lack of affordable high-speed access options for the home. The most widely used technique...

Challenging the New Conventional Wisdom of Net Commerce Strategies.(Industry Trend or Event)
July 1, 1999... After years of hype, significant confusion exists among scholars and practitioners regarding expectations for e-commerce market development and the selection of effective Internet commerce strategies. Adding to this confusion is the realization...

DEFENSIVE INFORMATION WARFARE.(Technology Information)
July 1, 1999... As the wonders of global connectivity unfold, the world is changing its perception toward the use of computers. Computers are no longer viewed as mere number-crunching devices nor is the use of computers limited to the scientific and...

HIGH-CONFIDENCE DESIGN FOR SECURITY.(Technology Information)
July 1, 1999... Don't trust--verify. The widespread use of networks makes information security a major concern when the underlying network (for example, the Internet) is assumed to be insecure. Systems with security requirements typically must operate...

INOCULATING SOFTWARE FOR SURVIVABILITY.(Government Activity)
July 1, 1999... An old adage holds true for software: you can build a stronger system by first breaking it. In early 1998, several dozen computer systems in U.S. military installations and government facilities were successfully hacked, resulting in a...

A COP ON THE BEAT: COLLECTING AND APPRAISING INTRUSION EVIDENCE.(Technology Information)
July 1, 1999... Effective intrusion detection, like police work, requires prioritization and careful fusion of evidence from disparate sources. There is little question that the ever-growing volume and diversity of information available over global and...

TESTING AND EVALUATING COMPUTER INTRUSION DETECTION SYSTEMS.(Air Force Research Laboratory)(Government Activity)
July 1, 1999... Your mission-critical software has vulnerabilities that intruders will try to exploit. The U.S. Air Force is developing new systems to catch hackers as they search for weak points. On May 22, 1996, the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO)...

INTRUSION DETECTION FOR DISTRIBUTED APPLICATIONS.(Technology Information)
July 1, 1999... A distributed application is vulnerable to attack code masquerading as one of the components. An application that has been trained to recognize "itself" can reject such imposters. The first step in defending against an information warfare...

TRUSTED RECOVERY.(Technology Information)
July 1, 1999... Prevention and detection receive most of the attention, but recovery is an equally important phase of information warfare defense. Recent exploits by hackers have drawn attention to the importance of defending against potential information...

THE JINI ARCHITECTURE FOR NETWORK-CENTRIC COMPUTING.(Technology Information)
July 1, 1999... A federation of spontaneously networked electronic components of all types can communicate, interact, and share their services and functions, as explained by Jini's lead architect. THE JINI[TM] ARCHITECTURE EXEMPLIFIES A NEW APPROACH TO...

THE RECODABLE LOCKING DEVICE.(Technology Information)
July 1, 1999... Securing information with the world's smallest combination lock. THE RECODABLE LOCKING DEVICE (RLD) IS A MECHANICAL SWITCH CONSTRUCTED USING polycrystalline silicon surface micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) technology. Polysilicon...

The Dark Side of Employee Email.(Industry Trend or Event)
July 1, 1999... Sexual harassment via email may not only get you a stern rejection and cost you your job but leave an electronic trail of legal evidence that can be replayed and reread in a court of law. The combination of email, an increasingly common...

A CASE OF ACADEMIC PLAGIARISM.(Industry Trend or Event)
July 1, 1999... What's to stop someone--desperate to fulfill a publishing quota--from copying an article posted on a publicly available Web page, repackaging it under another byline, and resubmitting it to another journal? The publish-or-perish philosophy...

Information is a Double-Edged Sword.(Technology Information)
July 1, 1999... As we begin the tenth year of this monthly column, it seems eminently clear that information technology has enormous benefits, but that it also can be put to undesirable use. Market forces have produced many wonderful products and services, but...