News Summary for November 27th, 2006 by Andrew Miklas ================================================================== 1. "You're Not Alone". New York Times, Section D, page 1. Summary: ======== People are still unsure of the best ways of protecting their Internet-accessible devices from attack. Now that the "smart home" is finally becoming a reality, this will create an even larger problem, as attackers will potentially be able to directly influence the physical environment in which we live. Examples cited in the article include attackers remotely unlocking Internet-accessible doors, and adjusting thermostats and fridges. The article also mentioned that doctors are beginning to rely on Internet-attached medical sensors in order to keep a constant watch on patients, which could also be affected by online attackers. Relevant Questions & Research Ideas: ==================================== We need ways to securely and easily associate devices with one another. For example, the article mentions that in the future, people will use their cell-phones as "universal remote controls" to control all manner of household electronics and appliances. If we designed the authentication systems for home network and automation systems around device pairing, we could mitigate the effects of poorly chosen passwords. In order for this to work well, there has to be an easy way to take a new cell-phone and associate it with all the devices in a house in one easy step. The paper "Persistent Personal Names for Globally Connected Mobile Devices" from OSDI 2006 discusses these sorts of ideas. ================================================================== 2. "Armed with Internet Bargains, Travellers Battle High Airfares". New York Times, Section A, page 1. Summary: ======== Today, in order to get the cheapest airfare, you have to spend a considerable amount of time bargain hunting online. Even travel sites like Expedia can return very different fares if the search criteria are only slightly altered. Ordinary competitive pressures don't seem enough to cause the market to create a truly comprehensive and easy-to-use system that consistently returns the best possible airfare. Relevant Questions & Research Ideas: ==================================== This problem might be ideal for co-operative search techniques. When a user buys a ticket, the details of the purchase are made available to others. When a user wants to buy a ticket, he searches for the last N ticket sales that fit his flight criteria. Using this information, he can quickly determine the "going rate" for this flight, and get a good idea as to the airlines that best match his needs. This system doesn't rely at all on the airlines making their databases available. Furthermore, historic data can even be leveraged in order to determine the best dates to buy tickets, etc. ================================================================== 3. "Free Services to Inspire Your Cell Phone". New York Times, Section C, page 1. Summary: ======== All sorts of services for cell phones are being made available by third-party companies. Many of these directly compete with services offered by the cellphone providers. One example is a long distance bridge which allows for cheap international calls. Another is an enhanced voice-mail service that integrates with your PC. Finally, a "voice instant messenger" application was described; it is to voice-mail what instant messenging is to e-mail. Relevant Questions & Research Ideas: ==================================== Service providers won't be able to rely on vertical integration in their billing plans, since third party companies may be able to offer add-on services such as voice-mail that are both superior and cheaper to the ones provided by the network. What sorts of network billing schemes will be both acceptable to users and the service providers? One presented application was a port of an existing application with a twist: it made use of voice rather than text as the primary input mechanism of a cell phone. How can we adapt other traditional applications to the data sources and UI provided by the cell phone? In particular, there is lots of information that can be gleaned from a user's surroundings that doesn't have a direct analogue in traditional computing.