When apps collect more data, outrage is powerful -- sometimes
December 13, 2016 | Laura Hautala,Cnet
Press
Privacy policies go unread by 99.9 percent of users, said Serge Egelman, who focuses on user-friendly security and privacy as a researcher at the International Computer Science Institute. Fortunately, though, "there's a very small number of users who do, and when they see something egregious, that information gets disseminated quickly."
Expanded Federal Hacking Authority Goes Into Effect Despite Last Minute Efforts in Senate
December 1, 2016 | Jenna McLaughlin, The Intercept
Nicholas Weaver, a senior staff researcher at the International Computer Science Institute has written that the actual practice “doesn’t add weaknesses to the systems — in sharp contrast to backdoors,” referring to the FBI’s urgency to mandate technology companies install a way to access encrypted communications.
IRS Seeks Names of Virtual Currency Users in Tax Probe
November 30, 2016 | Sudhin Thanawala, Associated Press
Nicholas Weaver, a computer security researcher at the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley, California, said Wednesday's order may reflect the start of a broader effort by the IRS to go after virtual currency users. Weaver said he had not previously heard of a similar court order, although he said the IRS issued guidance recently that virtual currency is property, so any gains are taxable.
How a Grad Student Found Spyware That Could Control Anybody's iPhone from Anywhere in the World
November 28, 2016 | Bryan Burrough, Vanity Fair
Marczak had indeed found “something huge.” An activist friend in the United Arab Emirates had sent him an e-mail containing a single Internet link, which Marczak was almost certain would, if clicked, release malignant spyware into his mobile phone.
Forget conspiracy theories. This is why Trump’s Russian connection is actually a problem.
November 1, 2016 | Zack Beauchamp, Vox
"Unless you screw up and make your phishing campaign linkable like this group apparently did, it is very hard to attribute to any given actor," Nicholas Weaver, a senior researcher at UC Berkeley’s International Computer Science Institute, wrote to me via email in October.
Was a Trump Server Communicating With Russia?
October 31. 2016 | Franklin Foer, Slate
I put the question of what kind of activity the logs recorded to the University of California’s Nicholas Weaver, another computer scientist not involved in compiling the logs. “I can't attest to the logs themselves,” he told me, “but assuming they are legitimate they do indicate effectively human-level communication.”
Boffins predict web scams with domain registration data
October 31, 2016 | Richard Chirgwin, The Register
Princeton professor Nick Feamster and University of California Santa Barbara PhD student Shuang Ho worked with Alex Kantchelian (UC Berkley), Google's Brad Miller and Vern Paxson of the International Computer Science Institute to create PREDATOR – Proactive Recognition and Elimination of Domain Abuse at Time-Of-Registration. The important numbers are: the researchers say PREDATOR identified 70 per cent of domain registrations that were later abused; and they claim a false positive rate of just 0.35 per cent.
And Now A PREDATOR To Fight DNS Domain Abuse
October 28, 2016 | Jai Viajayan, Dark Reading
Early evaluations of the tool [called PREADATOR] using registration logs of .com and .net domains over a five-month period showed it to achieve a 70% detection rate and a false-positive rate of 0.35%, the researchers claimed in the paper. The results suggest the tool offers an effective and early first line of defense against DNS domain misuse, they noted. “It predicts malicious domains when they are registered, which is typically days or weeks earlier than existing DNS blacklists.”
Should the FBI Hack Botnet Victims to Save the Internet?
October 26, 2016 | Joseph Cox, Motherboard
“In this case they can, and it’s reasonable to do,” Nicholas Weaver, senior researcher at the International Computer Science Institute at UC Berkeley, told Motherboard in an email.
Is an American Comany's Technology Helping Turkey Spy on its Citizens?
October 25, 2016 | Thomas Fox-Brewster, Forbes
Nicholas Weaver, senior staff researcher focusing on computer security at the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley, told FORBES Procera’s capabilities were similar to those of a core function of the intelligence agency’s XKEYSCORE software.