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
Fbi's Search For 'mo,' Suspect in Bomb Threats, Highlights se of Malware For Surveillance
The man who called himself "Mo" had dark hair, a foreign accent and—if the pictures he emailed to federal investigators could be believed—an Iranian military uniform...
From ACM News
When Bitcoins Go Bad: 4 Stories of Fraud, Hacking, and Digital Currencies
With Bitcoin interest (and prices) spiking, you might be considering investing in your own little cache of digital currency.
From ACM News
Supreme Court Declines Case on Making Online Retailers Collect Sales Taxes
The Supreme Court on Monday declined to get involved in state efforts to force online retailers such as Amazon.com to collect sales tax from customers even in places...
From ACM News
Google Books Ruling Is a Huge Victory For Online Innovation
It's taken almost a decade, but the courts have finally handed down a ruling on Google's audacious project to scan millions of books to build a book search engine...
From ACM Opinion
Here's What the Morris Worm Prosecutor Thinks About Aaron Swartz
It was 25 years ago Tuesday that The New York Times first named 23-year-old Cornell graduate student Robert Morris as the culprit behind what became known as the...
From ACM Careers
How a Grad Student Trying to Build the First Botnet Brought the Internet to Its Knees
On November 3, 1988, 25 years ago Sunday, people woke up to find the Internet had changed forever.
From ACM News
NSA Infiltrates Links to Yahoo, Google Data Centers Worldwide, Snowden Documents Say
The National Security Agency has secretly broken into the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centers around the world, according to documents...
From ACM News
Who Tracks the Trackers that Track You Online? You Can, with Lightbeam.
When your browser landed on this article, it didn't just talk to the friendly servers at washingtonpost.com.
From ACM Opinion
Here's Why the Feds Didn't Have More Skilled Programmers For Healthcare.gov
HealthCare.gov, the Web site at the center of President Obama's federal health insurance exchange, has been plagued with problems since it opened for business Oct...
From ACM TechNews
NSA Collects Millions of Email Address Books Globally
The U.S. National Security Agency harvests hundreds of millions of contact lists from personal email and instant messaging accounts worldwide.
From ACM News
Here's Everything You Should Know About Nsa Address Book Spying in One Faq
A new report from The Washington Post, based on documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden, reveals that the National Security Agency is collecting hundreds...
From ACM Opinion
Nsa Chief Defends Collecting Americans' Data
The head of the National Security Agency delivered a vigorous defense Wednesday of his agency's collection of Americans' phone records for counterterrorism purposes...
From ACM TechNews
Alan Turing’s Story Could Be Rebooted By Calls to Pardon Late Computer Legend
More than 50 years after the death of computing pioneer Alan Turing, a movement is cresting to reboot the record of the British mathematician's life.
From ACM News
The Nsa Sponsors 'cyber Operations' Training at niversities. Here's What Students Learn.
Last week, Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh became one of the latest—and most prestigious—schools to partner with the National Security Agency on a program...
From ACM Careers
Here's How One Hacker Is Waging War on the Syrian Government
As President Obama weighed U.S. air strikes in Syria this week, a lone American hacker was waging his own attack on the Syrian government.
From ACM News
The New York Times Web Site Was Taken Down By Dns Hijacking. Here's What That Means.
Just weeks after The Washington Post had our own run-in with the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA), the New York Times is down, and the SEA is claiming responsibility...
From ACM TechNews
Nsa Gathered Thousands of Americans' Emails Before Court Ordered It to Revise its Tactics
The U.S. National Security Agency illegally collected up to 56,000 "wholly domestic" communications each year from 2008 to 2011.
From ACM Opinion
Google Maps Trained S to Follow Directions. Now Its Former Developer Wants S to Explore.
It's not evident from the way his hair flops casually down and across, nor from his equally relaxed demeanor, but John Hanke is one of Google's most important idea...
From ACM Careers
Linkedin Connects Big Data, Human Resources
Every second, more than two more people join LinkedIn's network of 238 million members.
From ACM News