Friday, November 3, 2017

My Embedded Blog Has Moved

I have decided to officially move my embedded/CPS/IoT blog to http://marilynwolf.us. This site gives you information on my books (with two more books due out soon) as well as this blog.  Hope to see you there!

Monday, October 30, 2017

My Experimental Blog Site

I have set up a new marilynwolf.us for my books.  I can also use it to host this blog but the formatting system doesn't make it easy to feature both the books and the blog on the homepage. I have an experimental setup on marilynwolf.us.  Please go there, check it out, and let me know which you prefer. You can email me at wolf@ece.gatech.edu.  Thanks!

Sunday, October 29, 2017

Heathkit SB-303


This column has nothing to do with computing so far, but it might in the future. This is a Heathkit SB-303 amateur band receiver.  Great looking, isn't it?  And it is one of a line of several Heathkit ham radios. You can find here a very interesting article on the Heathkit SB line which started in the early 1960s and ran into the early 1980s.



Here is the guts of the radio. This is an all-transistor design; most of the SB radios used tubes. These were kits---this radio was built by someone who did a pretty good job.  It has also been restored by the previous owner. The large, electrolytic capacitors in the power supply tend to degrade over time and these have been replaced. The previous owner also repainted the case.

I am thinking about using one of these radios as the starting point for a hybrid digital/analog radio.  By tapping signals the signals in the radio and connecting them to analog/digital converters, I can ship them to a computer or FPGA for digital processing. Many software-defined radio rigs run at relatively low sample rates and so do most of their digital processing in the baseband.  A fancy data acquisition card could let me move the interface earlier in the radio, perhaps all the way to the first stage of amplification after the antenna. This sort of project would be a good way for me to get my hands dirty with software-defined radio; it would also be fun to compare the signal characteristics of the analog and digital versions.  All of these plans, of course, depend on time permitting from other projects and duties.  We shall see how things play out.

Monday, October 23, 2017

FAA Proposes Ban on Lithium-Ion Batteries in Checked-In Luggage

Gizmodo reports here on a proposal by the FAA to ban devices with lithium-ion batteries in checked-in luggage. They would like to see such a ban to be worldwide.  Their concern is based upon a test in which a lithium-ion battery caught fire next to a bottle of dry shampoo; the resulting fire was too fierce to be contained by aircraft fire suppression systems.

Monday, October 16, 2017

@Apollo50Wolf the Apollo Program 50th Anniversary Commemoration

I have set up a Twitter account, @Apollo50Wolf, for the commemoration of the 50th anniversaries of the events of the Apollo program.  Watch this feed for tweets on the anniversaries of Apollo events.  The feed will start with Apollo 4, an unmanned test launch, on November 9.

WiFi encryption vulnerability

Anandtech reports here on vulnerabilities in the WiFi encryption protocol. These flaws are in the WPA2 standard itself, not merely in some implementation of that standard.  The proof-of-concept attack, developed at KU Leuven, is known as KRACK.

Friday, October 13, 2017

Thursday, October 12, 2017

Autonomous Vehicle Test Track

NBC reports here on the Mcity autonomous vehicle test track at the University of Michigan.

Friday, October 6, 2017

Security Problems in Internet Cameras

Extremetech reports here on a report of a woman whose Internet camera was compromised, resulting in someone watching and talking to her.

AMD Embedded Radeon GPU

Anandtech reports here on the new Polaris-based embedded Radeon processor from AMD.

Thursday, October 5, 2017

New SD Cards for Industrial and Automotive

Anandtech reports here on a new line of SD cards from SanDisk targeted to the harsh conditions of automotive and industrial applications.

Monday, September 25, 2017

Report on GPS Spoofing

Bruce Schneier reports here on apparent incidents of GPS spoofing. GPS spoofing creates concerns for both safety and security.

Thursday, September 14, 2017

New Bluetooth Vulnerability

Extremetech reports here on a new Bluetooth vulnerability. This vulnerability does not require pairing and can be exploited under a wide variety of conditions.  It provides a serious breach, for example bridging air gaps.

Thursday, September 7, 2017

Qualcomm V2X Chip

Extremetech reports here on a new cellular-based vehicle-to-everything chip from Qualcomm.

Symantec Report on Attacks on Energy Companies

Tom's Hardware reports here on information-gathering attacks on energy companies in the U. S., Turkey, and Switzerland. It attributes these attacks to Dragonfly.

Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Sonos Changes Its Privacy Policy

Extremetech reports here on changes by Sonos to the privacy policy for its wireless home audio devices.

Friday, August 18, 2017

Hacker Attack on New York Hospital

CBS News reports here on an attack on Erie County Medical Center which disabled the trauma center's computer system for six weeks.

Thursday, August 17, 2017

Report on Pulse Wave DDoS Attacks

Tomshardware reports here on a new type of distributed denial-of-service attack known as a pulse wave. The attack pattern consists of alternating bursts of traffic and inactivity. This style of attack has several advantages: it requires fewer resources and allows the attacker to target multiple sites; it is effective against appliance first/cloud second mitigation techniques.

Friday, August 11, 2017

Happy Birthday, IBM PC

Today marks the 36th anniversary of the introduction of the IBM Personal Computer.  You can read the Wikipedia article here.

Fifth Anniversary of Mars Rover

A belated happy fifth anniversary to the Mars Rover.  Extremetech gives a report on Rover's five years here.

Friday, August 4, 2017

Thursday, August 3, 2017

Today in History: The TRS-80

Forty years ago today, August 3, 1977, Radio Shack introduced the TRS-80 Micro Computer System. Hats off to a classic.

Tuesday, August 1, 2017

Turboencabulator

The AFRL S5 Symposium has given me the opportunity to learn about recent work in safety and security as well as autonomy.  It also offered a discussion of the turboencabulator.   You can read about it at the Wikipedia page here; also be sure to watch this first video on the turboencabulator as well as this very informative video.

Aviation Software


This is a screenshot of the entertainment system rebooting at the start of a recent flight.  Guess what OS they run?

Friday, July 21, 2017

Incompatibility in Leica Camera Equipment

DP Review reports here on an incompatibility between a Leica camera and a Leica viewfinder.  Attaching the viewfinder may cause the camera to stop functioning.

Thursday, July 20, 2017

Movidius Neural Compute Stick

Anandtech reports here on the Movidius Neural Compute Stick from Intel. A Caffe convolutional neural network can be compiled onto the Movidius stick for execution.  The stick interfaces to the host via USB.

Tuesday, July 18, 2017

FBI Warning on Internet-Enabled Toys

Toms Hardware reports here on an FBI public service announcement which warns of the dangers of Internet-enabled toys.

Friday, July 7, 2017

DHS Investigating Russian Penetration of U. S. Energy and Manufacturing Computer Systems

The New York Times reports here that the Department of Homeland Security is investigating the penetration of computer networks by Russian hackers.  Targets include Wolf Creek Nuclear Operating Corporation, other energy facilities, and manufacturing plants.

Sunday, July 2, 2017

NTSB Docket on 2016 Tesla Crash

The National Traffic Safety Board reports here that it has opened a docket on the 2016 fatal crash of a Tesla Model S. The docket contains a number of items, one of which is the Driver Assistance System Specialist's Factual Report. This report notes that an event data recorder is not required for this vehicle but that "The Tesla Model S stores non geo located data on the vehicle in non volatile  memory using a removable SD card installed within the Gateway ECU ". SD cards are mechanically thin.

Friday, June 30, 2017

Recent Attacks May Not Have Been Traditional Ransomware

Tom's Hardware reports here that the recent ransomware attacks may have been intended primarily to disrupt targets, not to extract payments from them.  The payments were to be made to an email address that was quickly shut down.  Given the simple nature of the payment system, some question whether the attack was intended to generate revenue.  Instead, it may have been intended to disrupt operations in the targets with the ransom demands being something of a distraction.

How Hard is Flipping a Presidential Election, Part 3

My earlier posts walked through the arithmetic of two recent Presidential elections.  We saw that nullifying a small proportion of the total votes would have been sufficient to change the results. To close out the subject, let's make a few observations.

First, attackers generally have some options as to which regions they can attack.   Areas where the vote is expected to be closest make sense as good targets.  We saw that in the 2016 elections, a large number of combinations of regions could be put together to affect the required number of votes.  The 2012 election offered a fewer number of combinations but options were still available.

Second, the federated nature of the U. S. election system cuts both ways.  Design diversity is a good approach in all sorts of high reliability systems. The range of systems and procedures used in different counties means that an attacker cannot roll out a one-size-fits-all attack.  On the other hand, a security wall is only as good as its weakest point.  Some counties are likely to be more difficult to attack than others.  Given that a relatively small proportion of the jurisdictions need to be compromised, and given that multiple combinations of regions can be put together to produce the required number of votes, attackers can probe for weak links to achieve their ends.

Wednesday, June 28, 2017

IEEE Computer Special Issue on VLSI for IoT

Our new special issue of IEEE Computer on VLSI for IoT has been released here. The special issue was edited by Saibal Mukhopodhyay and myself.  Articles in the special issue look at issues in circuits, architectures, and applications that affect the design of VLSI devices for IoT system applications.

Qualcomm Announces Snapdragon Wear 1200

Qualcomm describes here its new Snapdragon Wear 1200 SoC which is aimed at wearables.

How Hard is Flipping a Presidential Election, Part 2

My earlier post ran some numbers to show how many nullified votes would have been required to change the results of the 2016 U. S. presidential election. For comparison, I ran a similar evaluation of the 2012 election.  The overall election was not as close and individual states also tended to be less close.  I chose one combination of 10 states whose total Electoral College votes would have been enough to change the result; other combinations would also be feasible.  Here are the numbers:


Slightly fewer than 1.8 million nullified votes in these states would have been sufficient to change the results.  That is less than 2% of the total nationwide popular vote.  Changing the results of this election would have been more difficult than it would have been for the 2016 election. The effort would also require attacking considerably more states.  But the numbers still show that a small proportion of votes would have been sufficient to change the results.

Tuesday, June 27, 2017

The Oscar Mayer Weinerfleet

Given that our global infrastructure is under assault, a little levity is welcome.  AV Club reports here on Oscar Mayer's new Weinerfleet, which includes both an autonomous land vehicle and a drone.

International Ransomware Attack

NBC News reports here on a ransomware attack going on at this writing.  As with many recent events, the effects of this attack span both IT and cyber-physical/IoT systems.  The article shows a photo of a cash terminal with a ransom message displayed.  A Russian oil producer stated that it avoided disruptions to its production system through the use of a reserve control system. A Ukranian airport which suffered an attack said that some flight disruptions might be possible.

How Hard is Flipping a Presidential Election?

This article is an exercise in arithmetic---we will run some numbers to see how much vote tampering would be required to change the results of, in this example, the 2016 presidential election.  It appears that no foreign power was able to change the results of that election, but some commentators have assumed that changing election results would require a great deal of effort.  If the goal of the bad guys is to put out a banana republic-style 99% win, that would be the case.  But changing a democratic election requires changing a much smaller number of votes.

Here are some notes on my process.  I used election data from Politico that you can find here. I also used public data on the number of counties in various states.  My analysis is based on knowledge of the results---I know which states to flip.  An adversary wouldn't know the exact total in advance although polling would give them some guidance; this assumption makes my analysis optimistic. On the other hand, I will count the number of votes that needed to be nullified to flip the result, which is an optimistic assumption. As in baseball, in which front runners playing each other has a larger effect than each team playing another, flipping a vote both takes it away from your opponent and gives a vote to you.

The popular vote totaled 62,523,126 for Clinton and 61,201,031 for Trump.  That gives a difference of 1,322,095 or 1.1% of the total votes cast.

However, the United States presidential election is based on the Electoral College. The adversary needs to flip enough states to change those results, namely 270 out of 538.  (As an aside, I believe that the wisdom of the Founding Fathers has been repeatedly affirmed and I understand their reasons for creating the Electoral College. Each voting system has its own concerns, as Martin Gardner showed in his outstanding article.) The election results gave 232 Electoral College votes to Clinton and 306 to Trump, a difference of 38.  The winning difference was 7.1% of the total number of Electoral College votes.

In order to change the Electoral College results, we need to flip enough states to make up that difference.  States with close popular vote totals require nullifying fewer votes to flip the state. I scanned the state-by-state results and found nine states whose popular vote difference between Clinton and Trump were 4% or less: Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maine, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.  The large number of close states gives attackers many options in how to affect results.

There are, in fact, several two-state combinations that provide the required Electoral College margin.  I chose to look at two, Florida and Pennsylvania.  Florida's vote was 4,485,745 for Clinton and 4,605,515 for Trump, a difference of 119,770 or 1.3% of the total.  Pennsylvania's vote was 2,844,705 for Clinton and 2,912,941 for Trump, a difference of 68,236 or 1.2% of the total number of votes.  Each of these states, as it turns out, has 67 counties.  This difference is within the polling error of many polls, so nullifying the required number of votes may be difficult to detect by comparisons to polling.

Flipping the overall election results would require nullifying only 188,006 votes or 0.15% of the nationwide popular vote.  That seems like a pretty small number to me. Even if the attacker chose to attempt to nullify many more votes to maximize their chance of success, the result would be a relatively small proportion of the votes cast.

My Princeton colleague Andrew Appel describes here his extensive work on voting machine technology. Some non-technical commentators, when faced with the work of Andrew and others, claim that changing machines would require too much effort, but the small number votes in danger calls that claim into question.  And attacking the machines is not the only avenue available to attackers, who could also target voter registration systems.  Voter registration attacks are sufficient to prevent voters from voting, which falls under the conservative vote nullifying methodology we have used here.

The underlying principle---that a relatively small number of votes need to be compromised to change the results of a democratic election---have been pointed out before.  Our exercise on the 2016 election shows that changing the results of this election would have required affecting a small proportion of the vote, despite the unambiguous margins in the vote totals.  Protecting the integrity of American voting will require significant and steady effort.

Monday, June 26, 2017

SiLabs CEO Talk on IoT

EE Times reports here on the DAC keynote talk by SiLabs CEO Tyson Tuttle.  He predicts that the IoT chip markets will take several decades to fully develop.  He believes that chip companies must understand the needs of system designers and provide tool sets as well as comprehensive hardware solutions.

Exynos i T200 SoC

Extremetech reports here on the Exynos iT200 SoC for IoT devices.  The chip features two arm processors and WiFi.

Thursday, June 22, 2017

Honda Plant Shut Down by Virus

Extremetech reports here that the WannaCry virus shut down a Honda plant in Japan for a day.

Saturday, June 17, 2017

Mediabench


This is a joint blog post with my food blog. A trip through St. Louis gave me a chance to catch up with my former student Jason Fritts, who is now a professor at St. Louis University.  Jason is well known for his work in multimedia computing and is the main organizer of the MediaBench benchmark series.  Over pizza he told me about his amazing project to builod accelerometers into a flycasting rod.  I think he said that the tip hits 30-40 Gs.  Very cool stuff.

Friday, June 16, 2017

EU Draft Report on Privacy and Electronic Communication

The European Parliament has released here a draft report on a proposed regulation on privacy and electronic communication.  This report is long and technical, but it does describe at least encouraging a variety of measures to protect the privacy of electronic communications, such as enryption.  It also specifically mentions metadata as worthy of privacy protection.

This report probably is intended to cover email, social media, etc. But it does seem to me that much of the language is general enough to cover all sorts of other communications. Messages and data samples from IoT devices are, after all, electronic communications. The data and control packets on a distributed control bus are also electronic communications.

Commuication within and between IoT and CPS devices and systems deserve privacy.   A large body of work has shown that quite a bit can be inferred about a person and their activities from a small number of samples.  However, these systems often run in real time and under power constraints.  The encryption and privacy techniques appropriate to IoT and CPS are, in general, quite different from those for information technology (IT) systems.  Let's hope that privacy protections cover all the bases and do so in a manner appropriate to the wide ranging ways in which we use computers.

US-CERT Warning on North Korean DDoS Botnet

The U. S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) has issued this alert TA17-164A on North Korea's HIDDEN COBRA cyberwarfare unit and their efforts on building botnets for DDoS attacks.  This page includes links to indicators of compromise (IoC) to be checked by system administrators.  US-CERT that people who find evidence of these tools should be reported to either the DHS National Cybersecurity Communications and Integration Center (NCCIC) or the FBI Cyber Watch (CyWatch). The alert identifies tools and capabilities including DDoS botnets, keyloggers, remote access tools, and wiper malware. It says that HIDDEN COBRA primarily targets older versions of Microsoft OSs as well as Adobe Flash.

Wednesday, June 14, 2017

Personal and Public in IoT Security

IoT devices present us with an interesting combination of concerns in the private and public spheres.  On the one hand, a poorly secured IoT device can present a safety hazard to its owner.  An insecure or poorly designed IoT garage door controller, for example, can lead to burglaries, improper operation of the door, etc.   Some of those same vulnerabilities can allow the device to be used in attacks on other parties, the recent Dyn attack being a prime example.  I am hard pressed to find a corresponding linkage between personal safety and public safety in non-computerized devices.  But even if other parallels exist, the scope of possible problems that can be caused by insecure IoT devices is troublesome.

Monday, June 12, 2017

Point-of-View Article on Safe and Secure CPS and IoT

The latest issue of Proceedings of the IEEE is out and it contains a short point-of-view article by Dimitrios Serpanos and me on safe and secure CPS and IoT.  We argue that safety and security are no longer separable.  We observe that best practices in both safety and security need to be applied to modern systems, but that new methods will also be necessary.  A special issue on this topic will appear in PIEEE a few months from now.  In the mean time, this article summarizes our vision for the design of these critical systems.

Thursday, June 8, 2017

IT Methodologies Should Learn from CPS

I have said on more than one occasion that Internet connectivity makes the CPS V methodology inadequate.  The V methodology works top down for design, then bottom up for implementation, forming a V.  It implicitly assumes that the specification is static, giving a known target for the end of the V.  The changing threat from the Internet undermines that assumption.
<p>
However, we should keep in mind that many CPS systems make use of software from the IT world, whether it be licensed or open source.  IT developers can no longer assume that their customers are solely from the IT world.  They need to take into account the requirements of cyber-physical systems.  To satisfy those requirements, they should adopt the more stringent verification and validation approaches embodied by the V methodology.
<p>
Many software IP modules are developed relatively independently of applications.  A V-methodology-based approach would condition the release of these modules on validation within some exemplary systems.  System-integrated testing from both IP and CPS domains would help to shake out bugs in both the implementation and specification.
<p>
Agile software development emphasizes fast development of disposable software.  That approach makes sense for some domains.  But long-lived modules require a different, more deliberate approach.  The confluence of IT and CPS encourages us to invest in the careful design and construction of building block modules.

Thursday, June 1, 2017

Criminal Gang Steals Jeeps Using Authentication Codes

Extremetech reports here on a motorcycle gang that stole 150 Jeeps using replacement key codes in a stolen database.

Wednesday, May 31, 2017

JetBlue Flight Diverted Due to Battery Fire

CBS News reports here on a JetBlue flight that diverted to an emergency landing due to a lithium battery fire.

Tuesday, May 30, 2017

Report on British Airways IT Failure

NBC News reports here that the recent British Airways IT failure and resultant operational problems were caused by a power surge.

Report on ExoMars failure

Extremetech reports here on a report from the European Space Agency on the failure of the first ExoMars spacecraft last fall.  The root cause of failure was saturation of the initial measurement unit due to high rotation rates.

Saturday, May 27, 2017

IT Outage at British Airways Causes Cancelled Flights

NBC News reports here on an information technology (IT) outage at British Airways that caused them to suspend operations at Heathrow and Gatwick.

Wednesday, May 24, 2017

Article on IoT Standards

Reader Arjun KV forwarded this interesting article on the large number of IoT standards now in the marketplace.

Saturday, May 20, 2017

Ninetieth Anniversity of Lindberg's Solo Transatlantic Flight

Thanks to Aviation Week for reminding me that this is the 90th anniversary of Charles Lindberg's solo flight across the Atlantic. 

Friday, May 19, 2017

Lessons from the Global Ransomware Attack, Part 6

Government guidelines and regulations have an important role to play in ensuring the safety and security of our computer systems.  That is particularly true for two classes of devices: IoT and industrial control. <p>
IoT devices are intended to be installed and used by non-experts with little or no setup.   Unfortunately, many manufacturers have tried to fulfill this goal by either not providing security features or by setting their defaults to little-to-no security.  Consumer protection mechanisms can be used to set minimum security standards for IoT devices.  IoT security can directly affect consumer safety if, for example, a hijacked device is used to enable a burglary.  IoT security also indirectly affects consumer safety given that IoT devices are easily hijacked for use in attacks on other structures.<p>
Industrial control systems are run by people whose responsibility is making stuff, not configuring secure computer systems.  A variety of regulatory mechanisms exist to manage safety of industrial systems.  We have already seen NIST promulgate guidelines for smart grid security; we could use similar efforts in other domains.<p>
Various agencies in the U. S. and Europe have made progress on guidelines for security of various types of computer systems.  But I think that a more unified effort that cuts across application areas will also be required.  While each application has its own characteristics, many CPS safety and security techniques are widely applicable.  Issuing separate standards across multiple domains results in wasted motion that could be used more effectively.  Stovepiped standards also could lead to less-than-best-practices being used in some domains.<p>
This will be my last post in this Lessons series.  But that doesn't mean the problems have been solved.  We all have a lot of work to do to ensure the promise of a computerized world.

Thursday, May 18, 2017

Lessons from the Global Ransomware Attack, Part 5

A common source of exploits and security holes is bad coding practices.  Wider use of software synthesis tools would help to reduce the frequency of these types of problems.  Software synthesis has been very successful in some domains.  Signal processing software is often synthesized from high-level algorithmic specifications.  Web site design tools make extensive use of synthesis.  Some of the synthesis tools out there, such as UML coding systems, provide little more than syntactic transformations but even limited forms of synthesis could help reduce coding-induced security problems.

Wednesday, May 17, 2017

Lessons from the Global Ransomware Attack, Part 4

IT and cyber-physical systems that support many companies and organizations are, to use a British term, bespoke---custom-made for the user.  These organizations may want to think about outsourcing certain functions to the cloud to be sure that they benefit from the best available practices for security and reliability.<p>
Many organizations assume that they keep their data most secure by keeping it to themselves.  But these organizations generally don't have computer security as part of their main mission.  Moving some functions to an outside provider could, if done properly, provide them with higher levels of security and reliability.<p>
Oursourcing some computer operations would be easier if we had better software patterns and architectures for industrial control, patient management, etc.  Much of the work on cloud services is motivated by transactions.  I encourage my colleagues to put some thought into software designs that can be customized to applications that operate on real-time data and signals.

Tuesday, May 16, 2017

Lessons from the Global Ransomware Attack, Part 3

The WannaCry attack reinforces a point that I have made before: we can no longer draw a clean distinction between information technology (IT) and cyber-physical (CPS) systems.  WannaCry targeted traditional IT systems but it disrupted the operation of hospitals.  Last year's IT failures at major U. S. airlines were caused by equipment failures, not attacks, but they disrupted flight operations.
<p>
Perhaps it's time for IT operations to design to higher levels of fault tolerance.  It seems that applying fault-tolerant methods to the system core isn't enough---we should apply those techniques to the entire distributed system.
<p>
Design diversity should be an important part of fault-tolerant design for critical systems.  We have put our eggs in a very small number of software baskets.  The Morris worm of the 1980s provided an early example of the benefits of design diversity when the original Unix lab was protected from the worm because they ran their own mailer.

Monday, May 15, 2017

Lessons from the Global Ransomware Attack, Part 2

As I wrote yesterday in Part 1 of this series, software updates are not an acceptable solution to security problems for many organizations that cannot shut down their systems.  A great deal of software is inadequately designed and tested before it is shipped.  Software companies (and open source groups) expect users to live with the consequences of their poor engineering methodologies.  The software industry needs to improve its practices and deliver more reliable products.

Unfortunately, the news media have relied on quotes from a mixed bag of people, most of whom recommend updates as the best method to battle Internet attacks.  CNN went so far as to publish an opinion piece from a lawyer and self-described hacker which provided this advice.  I'm disappointed that CNN didn't make an effort to find more a more qualified person to speak on this important topic.

Sunday, May 14, 2017

Lessons from the Global Ransomware Attack, Part 1

How should we protect against future attacks such as the ongoing worldwide ransomware attack?  There are no easy fixes but we can draw some lessons.<p>
The standard response from computer professionals for these types of problems is "update your system." Unfortunately, not all systems can be kept up-to-date.  Many operations can't be shut down because the physical plants that rely on those systems can't be shut down. Economics also limit the speed with which hardware and software can be updated.  And let's face it, software updates often require hardware updates.<p>
I have written before about the problems with relying on Moore's Law to fix your design problems.  Computer systems are maturing and will not be replaced as frequently in the future.  And relying on upgrades to eliminate your design problems is simply bad engineering.<p>
The designers of safety-critical systems have become used to creating software that works.  The rest of the software industry has not yet caught up.  Unfortunately, given the ubiquity of computers and the widespread use of both purchased and open-source software components, we can't make a clean distinction any more between systems that require high levels of reliability and those that do not.  The patients of Britain's National Health Service have learned that lesson.

Saturday, May 13, 2017

Ransomware Attacks Use NSA Exploits

Extremetech reports here that the worldwide ransomware attack---Britain's NHS is only one of its many targets---makes use of the Eternalblue exploit from the leaked NSA documents. This exploit seems to affect primarily older Windows systems.  However, both IT and cyber-physical systems are not easily updated so many systems are still vulnerable.

Friday, May 12, 2017

Ransomware affects British National Health Service

CBS News reports here on a ransomware attack that has affected many organizations, among them Britain's National Health Service (NHS).  Some hospitals have turned away patients due to the attack.  This event shows the blurry line between information technology (IT) and cyber-physical systems.  The ransomware attacked traditional IT computers but resulted in loss of service to hospitals, which are critical infrastructure.

Friday, May 5, 2017

Android Apps Use Ultrasonic Monitoring

Extremetech reports here on a Germany research study which found that 234 Android apps use ultrasonic monitoring to track your activities.

Tuesday, May 2, 2017

Intel AMT Vulnerability

Tom's Hardware reports here on a security advisory from Intel on a vulnerability in its Active Management Technology (AMT).

Thursday, April 27, 2017

AAMI TIR57 for Safety and Security of Medical Devices

Ken Hoyme pointed me to AAMI TIR57, found here, which describes a common safety and security approach for medical devices.  He also points me to this presentation.

Common Weaknesses Enumeration

The Common Weaknesses Enumeration, found here, is a list of common software security weaknesses as developed by the community.

Amazon Edge View

The Amazon Echo device now comes as a variant with a camera. Thanks to the program Stand Up with Pete Dominic for the tip.

Thursday, April 20, 2017

Article on Spying by Consumer Electronics Devices

Extremetech reports here on a lawsuit which claims that Bose requires users of its wireless products to use software that spiess on the listening habits of its users.

Monday, April 10, 2017

High Cost of Aircraft System Certification

Aviation Week reports here on the high cost of international certification of aircraft systems---some companies report that certification is now more expensive than design.http://aviationweek.com/commercial-aviation/what-certification-tipping-point

Emergency Warning System Hack

The New York Times reports here on a hack of the Dallas emergency warning system.

Thursday, March 16, 2017

Printer Hacking

Here is an interesting paper from Columbia University on printer hacking.

Wednesday, March 15, 2017

Headphones Catch Fire During Flight

NBC News reports here on an incident in which a pair of headphones caught on fire while a woman was wearing them during a flight.

Article on Aircraft Display Systems

Aviationweek posts here a very interesting article on an incident involving, among other factors, the synthetic vision system of an aircraft.  This is a long article that clearly describes a complex situation. It bears careful reading.

Tuesday, March 7, 2017

WikiLeaks Release on Hacking

NBC News reports here on a release by WikiLeaks, which claims that the released document describe CIA hacking techniques.   According to the NBC News report, these techniques include a variety of techniques for hacking IoT and consumer electronics devices.

A Global Industry

I recently returned from a trip to Hong Kong where I met with several friends and colleagues.  A great many computer systems designers and researchers in Hong Kong trained in the United States; many also lived and worked in the U. S. after their education.  My friends continue to express and exhibit their appreciation and fondness for the United States. Many confess to have been changed by their experience living here.  America continues to be a beacon of hope for the world.

Thursday, March 2, 2017

IoT Shoes That Order Pizza

AV Club reports here on special Pizza Hut shoes with a pizza ordering button.  The report does not the wireless protocol used or the power consumption of the device.

Wednesday, February 15, 2017

A Hypothetical Analog vs. Digital Scenario

I have concocted a hypothetical situation in which analog beats out digital.  And it doesn't even require a zombie apocalypse.<p>
DPReview reports here on Nikon's significant financial problems.  They reported earlier that Sony's image sensor sales for smartphones are up but their camera sales are down.  So let's imagine a world in which the only cameras manufactured are smartphones---no large-sensor cameras.  We have a long way to go before we get to that point, but there is some small chance of that eventuality occurring.<p>
Smartphone cameras are quite good these days.  They now use high-quality sensors and optics coupled with sophisticated cameras running on the smartphone's high-performance embedded platform.  But small sensors have their limitations and for some applications, bigger is better.  We can expect some demand for large sensor cameras for the forseeable future.<p>
But how do you maintain these cameras?  Even ignoring firmware and driver updates, the hardware will fail eventually.  Both the image sensors and image processors are specific to the camera.  Once those chips go out of production, we are reduced to relying on a store of old chips stored in liquid nitrogen for replacement.<p>
Analog cameras, meanwhile are much easier to maintain.  Shutters are probably the hardest item to rebuild, but even those can be manufactured in a modest machine shop so long as the machinist understands how shutters work.  Otherwise, a camera is a box with a hole on one end. <p>
And although I can't make my own image sensor (even though I have access to a semiconductor fab line, it would be a very difficult and expensive process), I could make my own glass plates.  If Matthew Brady can make glass plates in a tent on a Civil War battlefield, I think that I can manage to make some for myself.
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Digital systems have a lot of advantages.  Long-term maintenance is not one of them.  Specialized parts eventually fail.  The manufacturing systems used to build them also go out of service.  When we use computers to build long-lived systems, we need to think carefully about the future.

Thursday, February 9, 2017

Early Circuit Degradation in Atom

A post from Anandtech here describes what seems to be an early circuit degradation problem in Atom C2000.

Tuesday, February 7, 2017

Article on TVs that Spy on Viewing Habits

Extremetech reports here on the extensive spying on viewing habits and system configuration characteristics performed by Vizio TVs.

Friday, February 3, 2017

What Are You Buying?

A widely held principle in the law is that software is intangible; when you pay for software, you are purchasing a license to use that software. The law generally holds that software is fundamentally different from tangible goods.  Of course, we have discussed in an earlier blog post about the physical representation of software.  My book The Physics of Computing uses the computation of the mass of a bit as an example (Q = CV; m_bit = m_qQ).
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But the line of reasoning of the legal profession has a more fundamental flaw.  When I buy a car, no one bothers to consider whether I am purchasing a license to make my own copies of the car.  Everyone agrees that I am buying a physical object, no questions asked.  In the 20th century, when building a car was a hard, long job, this scenario was a no-brainer.  But 3-D printing changes the equation.  We can assume that someone will, sooner or later, scan an entire car and 3D print a copy.  So where is that fundamental distinction between cars and software?

Friday, January 27, 2017

50th Anniversary of Apollo 1 Disaster

Fifty years ago today, January 27, 1967, a fire on the launchpad during a test killed the entire crew of Apollo 1: Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom, Edward H. White II, and Roger B. Chaffee.  Their sacrifice has not been forgotten.  You can find NASA's report on their Day of Remembrance here.

Monday, January 23, 2017

Article on Samsung Galaxy Note 7 Battery Fires

Anandtech reports here on Samsung's report on the casues of Galaxy Note 7 fires.  They found different manufacturing problems in the batteries from two different manufacturers. 

Friday, January 20, 2017

Monday, January 16, 2017

Reports on Galaxy Note 7 Battery Fires

Reuters reports here that a Samsung report will include that the main cause of Galaxy Note 7 fires was the battery, not computer hardware or software.

Saturday, January 14, 2017

US Department of Commerce Report on IoT Security

Reader K. V. Arjun passed along this news article on a report by the U. S. Department of Commerce that recommends the development of standards for IoT security.

Sunday, January 8, 2017

Movie on The Lousy State of IoT Security

My friend Dimitrios Serpanos introduced me to this new movie starring Pierce Brosnan of 007 fame on the subject of IoT and smart home security.

Thursday, January 5, 2017

Yet More Stupid Ideas in Consumer Electronics

Extremetech reports here on the new Bluetooth-enabled toaster announced at this week's Consumer Electronics Show.  The article is extremely funny but the product is all too real.