Communications of the ACM
Innovation Is Overrated: A Provocation
Digital innovation is not working in the interest of the whole of society. It is time to radically rethink its purpose without…
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
How To Fix the Gender Gap in Technology
The United States has produced viable female presidential candidates, women athletes who command millions of dollars in endorsements, and the first female Nobel...
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
Berners-Lee: World Finally Realizes Web Belongs To No One
Sir Tim Berners-Lee is the reason you're reading this story in a web browser, complete with hypertext like this and an internet address that looks like this: ...
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 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
Are We Living in Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451?
Science-fiction author Ray Bradbury, one of the world's leading writers of the genre for more than 60 years, died on Wednesday at the age of 91. Although he wrote...
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
Stuxnet Expert Calls .s. the 'good Guys' in Cyber-Warfare
Sitting in the front row for the first full day of the International Conference on Cyber Conflict was one of the industry’s foremost "rock star" researchers, ...
From ACM Opinion
Nations Must Talk to Halt 'cyber Terrorism': Kaspersky
Eugene Kaspersky, whose lab discovered the Flame virus that has attacked computers in Iran and elsewhere in the Middle East, said on Wednesday only a global effort...
From ACM Opinion
Can America Ever Have Another 'sputnik Moment'?
In his 2011 State of the Union Address, President Obama declared, "This is our generation's Sputnik moment." Sputnik was the satellite that the Soviets had launched...
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
Steve Blank Believes Social Might Be Killing Silicon Valley
Amid the buildup to the Facebook IPO, serial entrepreneur Steve Blank was sounding an ominous warning to anyone who would listen.
From ACM Opinion
Augmented Reality Offers a New Layer of Intrigue
If you ever come across a photograph of communist-era East Berlin, or modern Pyongyang in North Korea, the cityscapes look drab and featureless. Billboards, advertising...
From ACM Opinion
Craig Venter Wants to Solve the World's Energy Crisis
There is one version of Craig Venter's life story where he would’ve been a dutiful scientist at the National Institutes of Health, a respected yet anonymous researcher...
From ACM Opinion
What Fearmongers Get Wrong About Cyberwarfare
Should we worry about cyberwarfare? Judging by excessively dramatic headlines in the media, very much so. Cyberwarfare, the argument goes, might make wars easier...
From ACM Opinion
