Communications of the ACM
Generative AI Degrades Online Communities
How large language models are influencing online communities.
From ACM Opinion
What Have We Learned: Flame Malware
When the news about the Flame malware first broke several weeks ago, people from all parts of the security community, political world and elsewhere quickly began...
From ACM Opinion
The Vulnerabilities Market and the Future of Security
Recently, there have been several articles about the new market in zero-day exploits: new and unpatched computer vulnerabilities. It's not just software companies...
From ACM News
How Depressives Surf the Web
In what way do you spend your time online? Do you check your email compulsively? Watch lots of videos? Switch frequently among multiple Internet applications—from...
From ACM Opinion
Desktop Computers Look More and More Like Smartphones
If you're an experienced computer user, you probably remember explaining to newbies how a desktop computer worked: Your photos should go in this folder; your documents...
From ACM Opinion
Apple's Strategy of Built-In Obsolescence
Ross Miller made a good point about Apple's new flagship laptop, in his review for the Verge. Once you take into account that it has a solid-state drive, it's actually...
From ACM TechNews
Researcher: Interdependencies Could Lead to Cloud 'meltdowns'
As cloud computing becomes increasingly common, serious operational "meltdowns" could take place as end users and vendors mix, match, and bundle services for various...
From ACM Opinion
World's Largest Organization For Computer Professionals Comes Out Against Cispa
The U.S. Public Policy Council of the Association of Computing Machinery, representing ACM, came out against CISPA, the cybersecurity legislation recently passed...
From ACM News
Google Fights Back in China
Two giants on the world stage are battling over the future of information.
From ACM News
Apple's Stash of Credit Card Numbers Is Its Secret Weapon
That little iPhone in your pocket is perfectly positioned to become a clone of the credit cards in your wallet or purse.
From ACM Opinion
Is Flame Virus Fallout a Chinese, Russian Plot to Control the Internet?
Has the U.S. government been caught with its virtual hands in the world's cookie jar? And might it lose control of the Internet as a consequence?
From ACM News
Back to Stuxnet: The Missing Link
Two weeks ago, when we announced the discovery of the Flame malware we said that we saw no strong similarity between its code and programming style with that of ...
From ACM Opinion
Drones, Computer Viruses, and Blowback
Another day, another senior al-Qaeda leader killed by a drone strike. (I can't be the first to point out that being al-Qaeda's No. 2 is like being the drummer for...
From ACM Opinion
Cyberweapons: Bold Steps in a Digital Darkness?
In 1945, the United States organized a committee to investigate whether nuclear weapons should become a central military technology, or whether to abjure the weapons...
From ACM Opinion
How Google and Microsoft Taught Search to 'understand' the Web
Despite the massive amounts of computing power dedicated by search engine companies to crawling and indexing trillions of documents on the Internet, search engines...
From ACM News
Bionic Brains and Beyond
The National Spelling Bee of 2023 started out like any other, but controversy enveloped the contest when Suzy Hamilton, an 8-year-old from Tulsa, emerged as the...
From ACM Opinion
Is It Possible to Wage a Just Cyberwar?
In the last week or so, cyberwarfare has made front-page news: the United States may have been behind the Stuxnet cyberattack on Iran; Iran may have suffered another...
From ACM Opinion
Why Attack When We Can't Defend?
In December 2010, after we had reverse engineered the Stuxnet virus, I argued that the attackers must have known they would open Pandora's box. Others suggested...
From ACM Opinion
Where Speech Recognition Is Going
Until recently, the idea of holding a conversation with a computer seemed pure science fiction. If you asked a computer to "open the pod bay doors"—well, that was...
From ACM Opinion
Why Antivirus Companies Like Mine Failed to Catch Flame and Stuxnet
A couple of days ago, I received an e-mail from Iran. It was sent by an analyst from the Iranian Computer Emergency Response Team, and it was informing me about...
From ACM Opinion