From Newsweek: College Teacher Shows Students How to Be Hackers. Ledin compares the companies' hold over antivirus technology (under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, the companies' codes are kept secret) to cryptography decades ago, when the new science of scrambling data was largely controlled by the National Security Agency. [. . .] Why should we shy away from learning something that is important to everyone?," Ledin asks. "Yes, ...

From the New York Times: China Orders Highest Alert Level. Chinese officials have thrown an almost smothering blanket of security across this capital of 17 million in preparation for the start of the Olympic Games on Friday. Above all else, Chinese leaders say, these Olympics will be “safe.” China, infamous for accusations of human-rights violations from Amnesty International and suppression of free speech by Reporters Without Borders, is investing heavily ...

IST students were sent an email recently announcing a new job posting system and the dismantling of ISTechTRAK. Despite the awkward name, ISTechTRAK worked fairly well and played an indirect role in landing each of my internships. It also had room for improvement, which I won't address here nor speculation on its replacement. My interest was piqued by the opaqueness of the message. The turnover of the system is ...

A blog is not a forum. Both accept reader opinions, but forums require registration and blogs do not. ISTBuilding.com has two forums. Since last jumping my feed reader to comment, this website implemented Disqus-based comments enabling threading and registration. Personally, I think comment threading is counter-intuitive and unnecessary, but I don't really have any quibbles with implementing it here. Registration is a deal breaker. First, let's not be confused. The ...

Today, six Security and Risk Analysis (SRA) Club members and myself attended the first day of the 2nd Annual National Security Analysis and Risk Management Conference hosted by SARMA and George Mason Law School's Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) Program. My intentions are not to summarize the speakers events, but they are instead to share specific points. As Matt wrote in his previous post, SARMA is an acronym for ...

One of our visions at IST Building is to bridge the gap between the undergraduate and the graduate communities. We co-exist within the College of IST but the second and third floors represent more than just a physical separation. Unless you are unusually well-connected within the College, it would be difficult to know what's going on in the other community. For instance, with the current resources available, it's ...

It's a difficult challenge to find a computer in "okay" condition in any of the IST classrooms. I am not necessarily suggesting a fleet upgrade -- although it does seem necessary over this summer -- but rather some better policies on protecting all the cool equipment we have available in the IST Building. It's disappointing to see an iMac screen cracked in the corner because some weirdo got ...

Ever need to use a particular computer lab, but there's class going on in it? A good idea suggested by Ashley McCully (SRA student) today is to create a website that lists all IST room schedules. Instead of walking through the building looking on all the paper sheets tacked on the doors, you could easily check the site to find an available computer lab. ...

As one of the leading of the leading i-schools in the country, I find it hard to believe that the College of IST could have such a lack of creativity and innovation with the college's website. The site navigation resembles a maze, and the content delivery is mediocre. Like the IST Student Government T-shirt says, "You can never find the link to TechTrak." As an institution that trains ...