Kind: Reads

reading a book, magazine, newspaper, other physical document, or online post

Octavia E. Butler

Who was Octavia E. Butler, Today's Google Doodle?

Octavia E. Butler, a groundbreaking African-American science fiction writer who would have turned 71 on Friday, was honored with a Google Doodle that celebrates her contributions to the literary world.

Butler was one of the first writers in science fiction — traditionally dominated by white male authors — to include diverse protagonists in her stories, and was widely admired for evocatively exploring hierarchies and human flaws in her work.

Sadly, as an avid science fiction fan, I had not heard about Octavia E. Butler until today when I noticed the Google Doodle. According to WikiPedia, she was the ".. recipient of both the Hugo and Nebula awards, in 1995 she became the first science fiction writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship.". I think I'll want to read some of her novels especially the Xenogenesis series.

Perverse Vulnerability

Perverse Vulnerability from Interaction between 2-Factor Authentication and iOS AutoFill - Schneier on Security

This new iOS feature creates problems for the use of SMS in transaction authentication. Applied to 2FA, the user would no longer need to open and read the SMS from which the code has already been conveniently extracted and presented. Unless this feature can reliably distinguish between OTPs in 2FA and TANs in transaction authentication, we can expect that users will also have their TANs extracted and presented without context of the salient information, e.g. amount and destination of the transaction. Yet, precisely the verification of this salient information is essential for security. Examples of where this scenario could apply include a Man-in-the-Middle attack on the user accessing online banking from their mobile browser, or where a malicious website or app on the user's phone accesses the bank's legitimate online banking service.

This often happens when convenience is part of the security design.

The ePrivacy Regulation: its background and how it compares to the GDPR

The ePrivacy proposal describes itself as lex specialis to the GDPR. That is, it deals with a specific matter such as cookies or emails, as opposed to lex generalis, which deals with more general matters, such as personal data. Lex specialis overrides lex generalis. Therefore, the ePrivacy regulation complements and even overrides GDPR in areas where it provides more specific requirements for a given subject, such as commercial emails or access to terminal equipment.

I think I want to take a course on privacy by design.