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Tuesday, February 15, 2005 |
Shooooot. I may try to buy Circuit City. Or, then again, I may not.
A Hedge Fund May Try to Buy Circuit City, but It May Not. Highfields Capital Management's bid for Circuit City is either the latest example of a hedge fund jumping into the leveraged buyout world, or a ploy to put Circuit City in play. By ANDREW ROSS SORKIN and RIVA D. ATLAS. [NYT > Business]
10:23:13 PM 
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SHA-1 Broken.
SHA-1 has been broken. Not a reduced-round version. Not a simplified version. The real thing.
The research team of Xiaoyun Wang, Yiqun Lisa Yin, and Hongbo Yu (mostly from Shandong University in China) have been quietly circulating a paper announcing their results:
- collisions in the the full SHA-1 in 2**69 hash operations, much less than the brute-force attack of 2**80 operations based on the hash length.
- collisions in SHA-0 in 2**39 operations.
- collisions in 58-round SHA-1 in 2**33 operations.
This attack builds on previous attacks on SHA-0 and SHA-1, and is a major, major cryptanalytic result. This pretty much puts a bullet into SHA-1 as a hash function for digital signatures (although it doesn't affect applications such as HMAC).
The paper isn't generally available yet. At this point I can't tell if the attack is real, but the paper looks good and this is a reputable research team.
More details when I have them. [Schneier on Security]
9:06:21 PM
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Best Places To Work For Postdocs: 2005: Who does the best job of
nurturing the hardworking heroes of science? By Maria W. Anderson,
Alexander M. Grimwade, and Theresa Tamkins, in the Scientist.
12:46:19 PM
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Four from BNA News:-
CHOICEPOINT WARNS THOUSANDS THEY MAY FACE PRIVACY RISK
ChoicePoint, a firm that maintains databases of background
information on virtually every U.S. citizen, has admitted
that criminals posing as legitimate businesses have accessed
critical personal data found in its databases. The incident
involves a wide swath of consumer data, including names,
addresses, Social Security numbers, credit reports and other
information.
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NSA MIGHT BECOME 'TRAFFIC COP' OVER US COMPUTER NETWORKS
The Bush administration is considering making the National
Security Agency its "traffic cop" for ambitious plans to
share homeland security information across government
computer networks. Such a decision would expand NSA's
responsibility to help defend the complex network of data
pipelines carrying warnings and other sensitive information.
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REGULATORS FINE J.P. MORGAN MILLIONS FOR DISCARDING E-MAILS
Regulators have fined J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. $2.1 million
for failing to retain electronic-mail messages that were
linked to investigations into conflicts-of-interest between
Wall Street's investment-banking and research-analyst
practices. The fine, which was handed down by the New York
Stock Exchange, Securities and Exchange Commission and the
National Association of Securities Dealers, is one of the
largest-ever levied for e-mail retention violations.
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MACROVISION TO INTRODUCE NEW COPY-PROTECTED DVDS
Content-protection company Macrovision is expected to
release a new DVD copy-protection technology today. The
company says its new "RipGuard DVD" technology can prevent
much of the copying now being done.
9:45:51 AM
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A Rude Awakening.
Library Daydreams
“…what I've been daydreaming about is the ability to export a list of books I've checked out so that it could be put on my university website and automatically be updated--sort of like Bloglines maintains my blogroll. A ‘currently reading’ list on my university website would help communicate my current research interests. I guess I can do this via allconsuming.net (still need to check out that site, recommended by Mel earlier), but it would be neat to do it through my own library….
Also, (and this might actually be possible soon, if it isn't already possible) I would LOVE to be able to provide deep links to the library catalog, allowing those who see my "currently reading" list to learn more about each book. I can do something similar through Amazon, of course, but I'd rather not advertise a for-profit business on my university website. Plus, the deep links would be handy for course websites, too (e.g., for listing what I've put on reserve for a class). (Yes, students can get that from the catalog, but it would be handier to deep link.)
The librarian didn't seem terribly enthusiastic about these ideas. Apparently, she doesn't blog, heh heh. Seriously, her lack of enthusiasm stemmed from her abiding concern for patron privacy.
It's so sad that a library has to be more worried about protecting information than sharing information. I am grateful that my library is attending to the issue, I just think it's sad….” [iBeth, via It’s All Good]
Help me out here… what’s a three-letter abbreviation for something that could help Beth display her list of checked out books?
I’m blanking out….
I just can’t think of it….
Waaaaiiiitttt a minute – could it be… RSS?!
Don’t even get me started on “the librarian didn’t seem terribly enthusiastic about these ideas” part, though. The privacy issue is exactly why ILS vendors should be providing the feeds. [The Shifted Librarian]
8:00:37 AM
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CombattingNon-Transparent PR with Grassroots Energy.
In an appropriately scathing posting on his Wi-Fi blog, Glenn Fleishman goes after think tanks and lobbying organizations that seem, in at least some cases, to be what he calls "sock puppets" for the telecommunications-industry giants that want to stop municipally built data systems before they start. The lack of transparency in the world of opinion-making is an ongoing scandal. What we have today is a system of opinion laundering, where powerful interests try to create public support for their side of issues without disclosing the hidden agendas. Media organizations then publish or broadcast credulous reports that may be grossly biased, without even hinting to news audiences what's going on. We need far, far more transparency than we get the opinion-making business -- and don't kid yourself, it's big business. What we have, instead, are increasingly more sophisticated efforts to hide the laundering. All of this is one reason why I recommend that you stop by Source Watch, formerly called Disinfopedia. It's a "a collaborative project to produce a directory of public relations firms, think tanks, industry-funded organizations and industry-friendly experts that work to influence public opinion and public policy on behalf of corporations, governments and special interests." (See, for example, the site's "How to Research Front Groups" explainer.)
[Dan Gillmor on Grassroots Journalism, Etc.]
7:57:20 AM
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