Communications of the ACM
Latest Research
From Communications of the ACM
Technical Perspective: The State (and Security) of the Bitcoin Economy
"A Fistful of Bitcoins" examines, in the context of Bitcoin, what we could learn by studying the patterns encoded in a complete record of every single financial...
From Communications of the ACM
A Fistful of Bitcoins: Characterizing Payments Among Men with No Names
Bitcoin has the unintuitive property that while the ownership of money is implicitly anonymous, its flow is globally visible. In this paper we explore this unique...
From Communications of the ACM
Technical Perspective: The Interplay of Neuroscience and Cryptography
An ideal scheme for password storage would enable a password with more than 20 bits of randomness to be input and output from the brain of a human being who is...
From Communications of the ACM
Neuroscience Meets Cryptography: Crypto Primitives Secure Against Rubber Hose Attacks
We present a defense against coercion attacks using the concept of implicit learning from cognitive psychology. We use a carefully crafted computer game to allow...
From Communications of the ACM
Technical Perspective: Circuit Placement Challenges
For a semiconductor circuit with billions of transistors, finding desired locations of circuit components is a challenging task that substantially impacts circuit...
From Communications of the ACM
SimPL: An Algorithm For Placing VLSI Circuits
VLSI placement optimizes locations of circuit components so as to reduce interconnect. We propose an algorithm for large-scale placement that outperforms prior...
From Communications of the ACM
Technical Perspective: Visualization, Understanding, and Design
Photographs capture the moment; paintings convey perception, impression, and feeling; illustrations tell stories. Computer graphics aims to enrich all these artistic...
From Communications of the ACM
Illustrating How Mechanical Assemblies Work
How-things-work visualizations use a variety of visual techniques to depict the operation of complex mechanical assemblies. We present an automated approach for...
From Communications of the ACM
Technical Perspective: Making Browser Extensions Secure
Vulnerabilities in browsers and their extensions have become the primary venue through which cyber criminals compromise the security...
From Communications of the ACM
Vetting Browser Extensions For Security Vulnerabilities with VEX
The browser has become the de facto platform for everyday computation and a popular target for attackers of computer systems. Among the many potential attacks that...
From Communications of the ACM
Dremel: Interactive Analysis of Web-Scale Datasets
Dremel is a scalable, interactive ad hoc query system for analysis of read-only nested data. By combining multilevel execution trees and columnar data layout, it...
From Communications of the ACM
Technical Perspective: Data Analysis at Astonishing Speed
The importance of data analysis has never been clearer. Globe-spanning scientific collaborations are exploring...
From Communications of the ACM
Technical Perspective: Complex Financial Products: Caveat Emptor
CDOs are examples of financial derivatives, with a value that depends on the underlying assets with which they are linked. These kinds of complex financial products...
From Communications of the ACM
Computational Complexity and Information Asymmetry in Financial Products
Securitization of cash flows using financial derivatives transformed the financial industry over the last three decades. Derivatives...
From Communications of the ACM
Liability Issues in Software Engineering: The Use of Formal Methods to Reduce Legal Uncertainties
This paper reports on the results of a multidisciplinary project involving lawyers and computer scientists with the aim to put forward a set of methods and tools...
From Communications of the ACM
Technical Perspective: Liability Issues in Software Engineering
The paper by LeMétayer et al. addresses one technical issue in a large and serious problem in the production...
From Communications of the ACM
The Informatics Philharmonic
A system for musical accompaniment is presented in which a computer-driven orchestra follows and learns from a soloist in a concerto-like setting. The system's...
From Communications of the ACM
Technical Perspective: Concerto For Violin and Markov Model
In the opening of Sibelius' Violin Concerto, a soloist plays delicately. The orchestra responds in kind. As...
From Communications of the ACM
The Emergence of Cross Channel Scripting
Lightweight, embedded Web servers are soon about to outnumber regular Internet Web servers. We reveal a series of attacks that target...
From Communications of the ACM