The five matches between champion Go player Lee Sedol and Google’s artificial intelligence program Alpha has come to a close. AlphaGo came out on top, beating the 9-dan professional player four times. The AP noted that this game was thought to be unbeatable by a computer. The head of the DeepMind team, Demis Hassabis, said … continue reading
There’s a lot of emphasis nowadays on having secure passwords, as well as changing passwords often to keep your information and accounts safe from hackers. Despite what some IT professionals have said in the past, one woman with the Federal Trade Commission has suggested that changing passwords less will actually keep systems safer. Lorrie Cranor, … continue reading
Google is giving developers an early look into its upcoming Android operating system: Android N. The company said it is giving developers the preview earlier than usual in order to give them more time to address feedback and make changes. “By releasing a ‘work in progress’ build earlier in development, we have more time to … continue reading
Multiple technology companies have been offering support to Apple during the FBI encrypted iPhone dispute, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation is among the many organizations that disagree with the government’s request to break into an iPhone. Yesterday, the EFF filed an amicus brief in support of Apple’s fight against the court order. The brief is … continue reading
It’s no secret that computer security is a difficult area of expertise. At the annual RSA Conference in San Francisco this week, attendees were treated to a host of solutions to solve their security woes. As usual, however, software development is not the focus. Robert Griffin, chief security architect at RSA, agreed that developing secure … continue reading
The ACM Turing Award, presented by the Association for Computing Machinery, is often referred to as the “Nobel Prize of Computing.” Today, Whitfield Diffie, former chief security officer at Sun Microsystems, and Martin E. Hellman, professor emeritus of electrical engineering at Stanford University, were recipients of the 2015 award for their contributions to modern cryptography. … continue reading
Recent reports show Google and other technology companies are standing with Apple in the FBI/Apple conflict, while others like Bill Gates sided with the FBI. Meanwhile, Apple’s engineers have begun developing new security measures that would make it impossible for the government to break into a locked iPhone, even if they do win the fight. … continue reading
Personal privacy vs. national security. That’s the issue at stake today as the FBI has asked Apple to hack into the phone of one of the shooters in the San Bernardino, Calif., terror attack in December. On the face of it, the stance by Apple’s Tim Cook seems genuine enough. People have come to trust … continue reading
Tim Cook released a message to Apple customers yesterday, saying the United States government has demanded that Apple take an unprecedented step that threatens the security of Apple customers. Cook wrote that the company opposes this order, which has implications far beyond the legal case at hand. He said that for years Apple has used … continue reading
The PostgreSQL Global Development Group has released an update to all supported versions of the database system. Versions include 9.5.1, 9.4.6, 9.3.11, 9.2.15 and 9.1.20. This release fixes two security issues, as well as several bugs that were discovered over the last four months. Users vulnerable to those security issues should update their installations immediately, … continue reading
Digital security is tough to get right, and on the software side of the equation, it’s even harder. Traditionally, software security has come in the form of edge-of-network devices, like firewalls and intrusion detection systems. It is the software itself, however, that often offers up the exploitable surface area to an attacker. USENIX Enigma, a … continue reading
Microsoft wants to make R the enterprise standard for cross-platform analytics. The company has unveiled its plan to deliver R-based analytics to new platforms, developers and the R community. When the company acquired Revolution Analytics (a provider of software and services for R) less than a year ago, it obtained Revolution R Open and Revolution … continue reading
