Communications of the ACM
An edited collection of advanced computing news from Communications of the ACM, ACM TechNews, other ACM resources, and news sites around the Web.
From ACM News
Online Friendships Light p Shadow Social Networks
Friending someone on Facebook makes an association public, but many relationships are never professed online.
From ACM News
Gps Loss Kicked Off Fatal Drone Crash
Hopes that a new breed of commercial drones can be easily integrated into civilian airspace have been dashed after it was revealed that the loss of the technology...
From ACM News
'bullet Time' to Stop Cyber Attacks on Power Grids
In The Matrix, the famous "bullet time" effect showed how Keanu Reeves's character Neo was able to sway out of the path of incoming bullets, as time appeared to...
From ACM News
Nash's Beautiful Mind Pre-Empted Million-Dollar Puzzle
John Nash's mind is even more exquisite than we thought. The Nobel laureate, famous for both his work in game theory and his schizophrenia—as portrayed in the book...
From ACM News
Telepathy Machine Reconstructs Speech from Brainwaves
When you read this sentence to yourself, it's likely that you hear the words in your head. Now, in what amounts to technological telepathy, others are on the verge...
From ACM TechNews
Smarter Password Checker Lets You Compare With Others
Researchers have developed a system designed to rate passwords relative to those already stored in a Web site's database. The password checker can tell users if...
From ACM News
Cyberwar Storm Clouds Are Gathering
Cyberspace. Some call it the new domain of war, after land, sea, air, and space.
From ACM News
Casino Cheats Snared by Smart Camera System
People trying to cheat in casinos may soon be taking more of a gamble than they realise. Grosvenor Casinos, a major UK chain, is assessing software that can spot...
From ACM News
Quantum Keys Let Submarines Talk Securely
Submarines must be able to talk securely with remote naval bases while remaining submerged. Could quantum communications allow them to pull off this technically...
From ACM TechNews
Quantum Hackers: Cracking the ncrackable Code
Norwegian University of Science and Technology researcher Vadim Makarov has developed a quantum cryptography method to defend against attacks of quantum key distribution...
From ACM TechNews
Air Traffic System Vulnerable to Cyber Attack
Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) technology uses unencrypted global positioning system signals to broadcast a plane's position to networks. The...
From ACM TechNews
Dumping Friends on Facebook Helps Make You Secure
Arizona State University researcher Pritam Gundecha has developed a method for determining which Facebook friends are most likely to leak private information.
From ACM TechNews
Image Searches 'poisoned' By Cybercriminals
More than 113 million Internet users were redirected to malicious pages due to search engine poisoning in May 2011, according to Trend Micro.
From ACM News
Face Recognition Technology Fails to Find U.k. Rioters
The response was as aggressive and swift as the riots themselves. Within a few hours of the worst of the looting across London and other English cities, attempts...
From ACM News
'Fluid Cloak' to Help Submarines Leave No Wake
Super-stealthy submarines may one day glide through the water without creating a wake, if a plan to channel fluid intelligently around objects can be made to...
From ACM News
Why Bitcoin Is Not As Anonymous As Most sers Think
People who use Bitcoin to ensure their purchases remain anonymous may want to reconsider their reliance on the online peer-to-peer currency, say researchers who...
From ACM News
Welcome to the Age of the Splinternet
Openness is the Internet's great strength—and weakness. With powerful forces carving it up, is its golden age coming to an end?
From ACM News
Interview with Key Lulzsec Hacker
It was early May when LulzSec's profile skyrocketed after a hack on the giant Sony corporation. LulzSec's name comes from Lulz, a corruption of LOL, often denoting...
From ACM TechNews
Cracking the Code of Machine Translation
University of Southern California scientists have developed a machine-translation technique that treats translation as a cryptographic challenge rather than a matter...
From ACM TechNews