Benlog

Building secure systems is difficult. It would be nice if we had a bunch of well-designed crypto building blocks that we could assemble in all sorts of ways and be certain that they would, no matter what, yield a secure system overall. There are, in fact, folks working on such things at a theoretical level [...]

If you’re hooked into the social networking world, you know about Facebook and the Facebook platform, which lets developers create all sorts of applications that make use of your Facebook social network in interesting ways. Flixster, for example, lets you share and compare your movie tastes with your existing Facebook friends. No need to reconnect [...]

A few weeks ago, I wrote about about how web sites that manage your data should be more open in order to better protect you. Not so surprisingly, I’m not the only one thinking about this issue.
Jeremy Keith has a fantastic detailed write-up regarding what he calls the “password anti-pattern.” It gets at the same [...]

Facebook launched a platform that lets third-party developers add Facebook applications. This is visionary, and it’s very very cool (though I’m not sure it’s the revolution everyone is talking about.) The problem, of course, is authentication. Take a look at the Zoho Facebook application. Zoho is a separate company. They have their own accounts. So [...]

(There’s always a dilemma between “publishing soon” and “polishing for peer review.” This is my first attempt at blog-based collaborative peer-review. Let’s see how it goes!)
The Problem
Phishing is a serious issue, and it’s only getting worse. Through various means, Alice ends up at a spoofed web site she thinks she recognizes (usually her bank). She [...]

As far as technology goes, 2007 will be about web security. With everyone storing more and more personal data on various web sites, and with the continuing innovation of mash-ups, it’s inevitable. And it won’t be the web security issues of the last few years, either, it will all be about how to do private-data [...]

It turns out, I’m giving another presentation before my defense… well, sort of, I’m on a panel at the Harvard Berkman Center’s Identity Mashup Conference in 10 days. Lots of very interesting folks getting together to discuss online identity. It should be quite interesting.
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George Clooney is upset at the Gawker Stalker web site for tracking celebrities by collecting information from the public. Clooney suggests Data Poisoning their site by submitting hundreds of bogus celebrity sighting reports.

I’m a big fan of Clooney’s latest films, but I didn’t realize he was this savvy about the Internet: its greatest strength — [...]

A few weeks ago, I attended Berkman’s Digital Identity gathering where we discussed the technical, legal, and business aspects of the Identity Metasystem, this new, meta approach to online identity promoted by Kim Cameron of Microsoft.

I need to write up my thoughts in greater detail, but in the meantime, Aldo Castaneda interviewed me and posted [...]