Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
June 2011
From ACM News
Legislation Criminalizing Creation of Computer Viruses Enacted
Japan's parliament enacted legislation Friday criminalizing the creation or distribution of computer viruses to crack down on the growing problem of cybercrimes, but critics say the move could infringe on the constitutionally…
From ACM News
Firms Adjust to Hacks
When email-marketing firm Epsilon Data Management discovered in March that hackers had stolen consumer email addresses it maintains for major banks and retailers, Chief Executive Bryan Kennedy faced a choice: to disclose the…
From ACM News
Internet Braces For New Addresses Beyond '.com,' Including '.bank,' '.eco' and '.canon.'
The organization that oversees the Internet address system is preparing to open the floodgates to a nearly limitless selection of new Web-site suffixes, including ones in Arabic, Chinese, and other scripts. That could usher…
From ACM News
Full-Field Implementation of a Perfect Eavesdropper on a Quantum Cryptography System
Quantum key distribution allows two remote parties to grow a shared secret key. Its security is founded on the principles of quantum mechanics, but in reality it significantly relies on the physical implementation.
From ACM TechNews
Ibm's New Future: Quantum Computing
Over the next 20 years, the potential of quantum computing could lead to a development boom in chip and hardware design similar to what Silicon Valley experienced in the 1980s--and tIt's no surprise that IBM is exploring quantum…
From ACM News
All Your Bitcoins Are Ours
Malware authors move fast. Following on from the previous blog post on Bitcoin botnet mining, we have seen a recent Trojan in the wild targeting Bitcoin wallets. The Trojan is Infostealer.Coinbit and it has one motive: to locate…
From ACM TechNews
New Software Improves the Maintenance and Management of Forests
Forests could receive better maintenance and management using new software developed by a team at the Polytechnic University of Valencia. The software is designed to generate maps of forest areas with information on timber volume…
From ACM TechNews
Nanomagnetic Computers Are the ltimate in Efficiency
Nanomagnetic computers would break the second law of thermodynamics if they used any less energy, according to new calculations from a team led by the University of California, Berkeley's Brian Lambson.
From ACM TechNews
Computer Security: Is This the Start of Cyberwarfare?
The emergence of the Stuxnet worm signals that groups or nations could launch a cyberattack that targets critical infrastructure and threatens to cause physical damage, and reflects the inadequacies of society's current cyberdefenses…
From ACM News
Can Wireless Networks Support the Promise of the 'cloud'?
Google, Apple, and Amazon are pushing more and more of your entertainment, your data—heck, your life—into the cloud. But what's it mean for the wireless network operators who are already struggling to keep up with heavy data…
From ACM News
Nasa Spacecraft Confirms Theories, Sees Surprises at Mercury
NASA scientists are making new discoveries about the planet Mercury. Data from MESSENGER, the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury, is giving scientists important clues to the origin of the planet and its geological history and…
From ACM News
Protecting Medical Implants from Attack
Millions of Americans have implantable medical devices, from pacemakers and defibrillators to brain stimulators and drug pumps; worldwide, 300,000 more people receive them every year. Most such devices have wireless connections…
From ACM News
Government in Cyber Fight but Can't Keep Up
The Pentagon is about to roll out an expanded effort to safeguard its contractors from hackers and is building a virtual firing range in cyberspace to test new technologies, according to officials familiar with the plans,…
From ACM News
Nanomagnetic Computers Are the ltimate in Efficiency
Computers that run on chips made from tiny magnets may be as energy-efficient as physics permits.
From ACM News
Google Voice Search Offers Natural User Input
Google Voice Search for desktop computers isn't much more than the company porting a technology that's been on mobile phones for a while to PCs. But don't write it off as a trivial bit of technology too quickly. Voice Search…
From ACM TechNews
Java Standards Process to Get an Upgrade
The Java Community Process (JCP) is poised for an upgrade designed to instill greater transparency, while JCP members who ignore their duties may be stripped of their voting privileges.
From ACM TechNews
'smart Cars' That Are Actually, Well, Smart
MIT researchers are developing an intelligent transportation system algorithm that factors in models of human driving behavior to warn drivers of potential collisions and ultimately assumes control of the vehicle to prevent crashes…
From ACM TechNews
Kissinger, Huntsman: .s., China Need Cyber Detente
The United States and China need to forge an agreement restricting cyberattacks and designating some areas as out of bounds to hacking, say former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and former U.S. ambassador to China Jon…
From ACM TechNews
Protein Folding Made Easy
A McGill University researcher and Massachusetts Institute of Technology collaborators have achieved impressive results with an algorithm for predicting protein folding in humans.
From ACM News
IBM at 100: From Typewriters to the Cloud
Say IBM—and you probably still think of computers. But today, the firm that was once all about hardware, makes its living from more intangible technology.
From ACM News
F.b.i. Agents Get Leeway to Push Privacy Bounds
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is giving significant new powers to its roughly 14,000 agents, allowing them more leeway to search databases, go through household trash, or use surveillance teams to scrutinize the lives…
From ACM News
Bitcoin: The Hacker Currency That's Taking Over the Web
Global, private and untraceable, it's the monetary system of choice for libertarians, geeks, businesspeople, and, apparently, drug kingpins.
From ACM TechNews
Digging Into Data, Day 2: Making Tools and sing Them
The creativity exhibited by scholars in the integration of big data and digital tools was highlighted in eight digital humanities research projects that won the first Digging Into Data competition.
From ACM TechNews
Ornl Package Tracking System Takes Social Media to New Heights
Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers have developed Tracking 2.0, supply chain software that provides a start-to-finish view as an item moves to its destination.
From ACM TechNews
Making Quantum Cryptography Truly Secure
An overlooked loophole in quantum key distribution technology was demonstrated by an eavesdropping method created and operated by researchers at the National University of Singapore and the Norwegian University of Science and…
From ACM News
Has Facebook Peaked?
Facebook's active user base grew by only 1.7% in May. That's about half its usual growth rate, and it came after similarly slow growth in April. According to Inside Facebook, a blog and research firm that tracks the site's traffic…
From ACM News
Who Is Behind the Hacks?
Every day there's another report of a computer hack. Yesterday it was a video game company and a U.S. Senate database. And today it could be the Federal Reserve. There's no doubt that there's a wave of attacks going on right…
From ACM News
Thieves Found Citigroup Site an Easy Entry
Think of it as a mansion with a high-tech security system—but the front door wasn’t locked tight.
From ACM News
A Test For Consciousness
How will we know when we've built a sentient computer? By making it solve a simple puzzle.
From ACM News
World Ipv6 Day Concludes Without Major Problems
World IPv6 Day has come and gone and — as on January 1, 2000 when the world held its breath for Y2K zero hour — it's safe to say that no disaster has befallen the Internet.