April 2019 - nexa - server-nexa.polito.it

2 students accused of jamming school's Wi-Fi network to avoid tests
by Giacomo Tesio April 9, 2019

April 9, 2019

Molto educativo: si denunciano due ragazzini invece di licenziare l'amministratore di sistema. http://www.wbrz.com/news/2-students-accused-of-jamming-school-s-wi-fi-netwo… Authorities say two northern New Jersey boys successfully crashed their high school's Wi-Fi network on multiple occasions to get out of taking exams. The two Secaucus High School freshmen are charged with computer criminal activity and conspiracy. Authorities say the 14-year-olds used an app or a computer program to compromise the network, and apparently took requests from other students to bring it down.

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Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the Music Industry Waged War on the Cassette Tape in the 1980s, and Punk Bands Fought Back
by Giacomo Tesio April 9, 2019

April 9, 2019

Salta all'occhio il parallelo fra musica punk e software libero. http://www.openculture.com/2019/04/home-taping-is-killing-music.html The first time I saw the infamous Skullcassette-and-Bones logo was on holiday in the UK and purchased the very un-punky Chariots of Fire soundtrack. It was on the inner sleeve. “Home Taping Is Killing Music” it proclaimed. It was? I asked myself. “And it’s illegal” a subhead added. It is? I also asked myself. (Ironically, this was a few months before I came into possession of my first combination turntable-cassette deck.) Ten years and racks and racks of homemade cassette dubs on my shelves later, music seemed to be doing very well. (Later, by going digital, the music industry killed itself, and I had absolutely nothing to do with it.) British record collectors will no doubt remember this campaign that started in 1981, another business-backed "moral" panic. And funnily enough it had nothing to do with dubbing vinyl. [...] The post-punk crowd knew the campaign was bunkum too. Malcolm McLaren, always the provocateur, released Bow Wow Wow’s cassette-only-single C-30 C-60 C-90 Go with a blank B-side that urged consumers to record their own music. EMI quickly dropped the band. [...] And then there were the parodies. The metal group Venom used “Home Taping Is Killing Music; So Are Venom” on an album; Peter Principle offered “Home Taping Is Making Music”: Billy Bragg kept it Marxist: “Capitalism is killing music - pay no more than £4.99 for this record”. For the industry, music was the product; for the regular folks, music was communication, it was art, it was a language.

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Final report of the High-Level Expert Group on the Impact of the Digital Transformation on EU Labour Markets | Digital Single Market
by J.C. DE MARTIN April 8, 2019

April 8, 2019

https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/final-report-high-level-… (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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The Pentagon Wants to Streamline Security Clearances by Using AI. That’s a Dangerous Idea. - Just Security
by J.C. DE MARTIN April 8, 2019

April 8, 2019

https://www.justsecurity.org/63539/the-pentagon-wants-to-streamline-securit… (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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Ethics guidelines for trustworthy AI | Digital Single Market
by antonio.vetro＠polito.it April 8, 2019

April 8, 2019

Pubblicato oggi https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/ethics-guidelines-trustw… AV == Sent from my wireless device ==

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FYI: You could make Tesla's Autopilot swerve into traffic with a few stickers on the road
by Giacomo Tesio April 8, 2019

April 8, 2019

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/04/02/tencent_tesla_hacking/ Tencent Keen Security Lab documented this week how it successfully infiltrated the autopilot’s system engine control unit (ECU) to take remote control of the car. The Chinese boffins also described how they fed on-board cameras with dodgy inputs, using stickers on the road surface, to force the vehicle to swerve across lanes, or turn on its windscreen wipers. The flaws were uncovered from 2017 to 2018, and reported to the automaker, which has since seemingly patched the security bugs. An in-depth paper describing the attacks was published at the end of last month, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk praised those behind the discoveries. [...] The researchers manipulated the car's camera image feed by placing three small squares on the ground, thus strategically changing a few pixels around the area where lanes are marked out. Alternatively, malware present in the system could modify the pixels directly as they streamed in from the camera. These adversarial inputs subsequently tricked the neural network into thinking it was in the wrong lane, or drifting into another lane, forcing it to swerve across the roadway to correct itself, potentially resulting in a deadly crash. In one attack, the car failed to identify certain lane markings, as a result of the stickers on the road, and didn’t steer in the appropriate direction to stay in lane. In another scenario, the car was made to see phantom lanes, causing it to change direction for no good reason. This attack posed the frightening possibility of nefarious miscreants making roads unsafe for Model S cars on Autopilot. [...] # Ultimate Mario Kart The team also found that – after gaining root access on the engine control unit (ECU), by getting the in-car dashboard or entertainment system's WebKit-based browser to open a malicious webpage, and then exploiting the underlying Android kernel to pivot through the internal computer network – they could control the vehicle's steering over the air with a Bluetooth game controller. ____ Qui i paper: https://keenlab.tencent.com/en/whitepapers/Experimental_Security_Research_o… https://i.blackhat.com/us-18/Thu-August-9/us-18-Liu-Over-The-Air-How-We-Rem… In fondo JavaScript sul browser non è così male: ci puoi giocare a GTA in 3D! "This is the Web functioning as designed": https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1487081#c15 Giacomo

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The Lab’s Quarterly - Gli algoritmi come costruzione sociale
by Daniele Gambetta April 8, 2019

April 8, 2019

Care/i, allego link del nuovo numero della rivista di Scienze Sociali *The Lab's Quarterly*, che in questo quaderno si occupa di ruolo degli algoritmi nella società. All'interno c'è anche un contributo che ho scritto con Massimo Airoldi (Università di Lione) sul mito della neutralità algoritmica. Da notare che la redazione della rivista ha espressamente cercato per questo numero ricercatori e studiosi di vari background (matematica, fisica, informatica...) proprio per avere un numero fortemente interdisciplinare. https://thelabsquarterly.files.wordpress.com/2019/04/2018.4-the-labs-quarte… Buona lettura e buona settimana. D.

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New York’s mass face recognition trial on drivers has been a spectacular failure - MIT Technology Review
by J.C. DE MARTIN April 8, 2019

April 8, 2019

https://www.technologyreview.com/the-download/613284/new-yorks-mass-face-re… (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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118° Mercoledì di Nexa | 10 aprile 2019
by Nexa Media April 8, 2019

April 8, 2019

Nexa Center for Internet and Society Newsletter Se non visualizzi correttamente questo messaggio clicca qui <http://nexa.polito.it/mercoledi-118> NEXA 118° Mercoledì di Nexa Mercoledì 10 aprile 2019, ore 18.00 - 20.00 Politecnico di Torino http://nexa.polito.it/mercoledi-118 Understanding cybergeography: visualizing how cyberspace and geopolitics interact Speaker Kavé Salamatian (University of Savoie) This event will be webcast live: https://nexa.polito.it/nexa-hangout-on-air The Internet is nowadays a major component of the contemporary world. Nonetheless, networks do not emerge in the void. They interconnect physical or logical agents that exists concretely and are therefore subject to diﬀerent forms of physical, political or economic constraints. *The network itself extends the abilities of its participating nodes and therefore go beyond the local constraints by opening new spaces or dimensions*. This the interplay of local constraints and global advantages that shapes the structure and properties of these new spaces. Internet and the cyberspace are built over equipment and infrastructures that are positioned in the geographical space. These physical component anchor strongly Internet, and the cyberspace, in the terrestrial space. *Cyberspace is a virtual and vaporous cloud that is rooted ﬁrmly in the concrete of geographic, economic, political, and physical interferences and constraints*. Overcoming these constraints have entailed colossal investments and for classical actors like governments or economic players, communication cables, satellites, data-centers, servers, etc., are vectors of power enforcement. Generally the distribution of Internet infrastructures in the terrestrial space poses classical problems in geography and geopolitics, like spatial planning or spatial inequalities, etc. One could therefore incline to think that Internet can be treated as any other infrastructure network like roads, pipelines, or energy transfer grids. Thus, the addition of a new type of artefact to classical geography or geopolitics should not transform the way of strategic thinking. However, a more precise analysis of the concept of cyberspace shows other dimensions to the discussion. We all have an intuitive feeling about the "cyberspace", but *is it a new space or just an extension of the space that have been studied for a long time by geographers?* Do humans have the same appropriation relationship with the cyberspace as we observe in classical geography? if yes, can we talk about cyber-territories and discuss about the power struggle to control them? Nonetheless, projecting any power needs information to decide its usage and to control its action. By shaping the way information are exchanged and are ﬂowing in the cyberspace, the Internet changes the distribution of power. During the past two decades, new actors have emerged that build their power, i.e., their ability to impact both the real world and the cyberspace, through gathering information of diverse nature. These actors project their " cyber-power " to dispute to each other " cyber-territories ".*This competition has not remained in the cyber-dimension and is concretely changing the contemporary world*. In a nutshell, real world power shape the Internet and in return the Internet changes the very basic nature of power. Understanding how this evolving interaction loop acts and shapes the contemporary world economics, politics and geography is of paramount importance. BIOGRAFIE - e informazioni supplementari [SALAMATIAN] *Kavé SALAMATIAN* is a full professor of computer science at University of Savoie. His main areas of researches has been Internet measurement and modeling, network security, and networking information theory. He was previously reader at Lancaster University, UK and associate professor at University Pierre et Marie Curie. Kavé has graduated in 1998 from Paris SUD-Orsay university where he worked on joint source channel coding applied to multimedia transmission over Internet for his Phd. In a former life, he graduated with a MBA, and worked on market floor as a risk analyst and enjoyed being an urban traffic modeler for some years. He is currently distinguished visiting professor at the Chines Academy of Science and also working closely with the Castex CyberStrategy Chair at the French National Defense Institute. He has been the recipient of a Chinese academy of Science Presidential Award in 2018. He is working these day on figuring out if networking is a science or just a hobby and if it is a science what are its fundamentals. In particular, he has been working on cyber-strategy, cyber-geography and the interaction between Internet and society specially on the impact of large scale Artificial Intelligence on societies. He has written a book on a comparative analysis of nationwide strategy of Artificial intelligence that will be published in March 2019. He has published more than 150 scientific papers. *Letture consigliate e link utili:* * J. Robin, K. Salamatian, /Envisioning Cyber-geography/ <https://www.cairn-int.info/abstract-E_HER_152_0123--envisioning-cyber-geogr…>, in "Hérodote" 2014/01. * AAVV, /A Cartography of Web Tracking using DNS Records/ <https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140366418307023>, in "Computer Communication" 2019/134. * L. Salamatian, D. Kaafar, K. Salamatian, /A Geometric Approach for Real-time Monitoring of Dynamic Large Scale Graphs: AS-level graphs illustrated/ <https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.00676>. * AAVV, /Les nouveaux territoires stratégiques du cyberespace : le cas de la Russie/ <https://www.cairn.info/revue-strategique-2017-4-page-169.htm#>, in "Stratégique" 2017/04. Che cosa sono il Centro Nexa e i cicli di incontri “Mercoledì di Nexa” e “Nexa Lunch Seminar” <https://www.facebook.com/nexa.center/> <https://twitter.com/nexacenter> <https://www.youtube.com/user/NexaCenter> #cybergeography <https://twitter.com/search?q=%23cybergeography&src=typd> #nexawednesday <https://twitter.com/search?q=%23nexawednesday&src=typd> #salamatian <https://twitter.com/kavesalamatian> Il Centro Nexa su Internet & Società del Politecnico di Torino (Dipartimento di Automatica e Informatica) è un centro di ricerca indipendente e interdisciplinare che studia Internet e il suo effetto sulla società. Maggiori informazioni all'indirizzo: http://nexa.polito.it/about. Durante i “*Mercoledì di Nexa*”, che si tengono *ogni 2° mercoledì del mese* alle *ore 18 in punto*, il Centro Nexa su Internet e Società apre le sue porte non solo agli esperti e a tutti coloro i quali lavorano con Internet, ma anche a semplici appassionati e cittadini. Il ciclo di incontri intende approfondire, con un linguaggio preciso ma divulgativo, i temi legati alla Rete: motori di ricerca, Creative Commons, social networks, open source/software libero, neutralità della rete, libertà di espressione, privacy, file sharing, big e open data, smart cities e molto altro. Al centro di quasi tutti gli incontri un ospite pronto a dialogare con i direttori del Centro Nexa, il Prof. Juan Carlos De Martin del Politecnico di Torino e il Prof. Marco Ricolfi dell'Università di Torino, nonché lo staff e i Fellows del Centro Nexa. Maggiori informazioni sui Mercoledì di Nexa, incluso un elenco di tutti i “Mercoledì” passati, sono disponibili all'indirizzo: http://nexa.polito.it/mercoledi. Si segnala inoltre che dal maggio 2012 *ogni 4° mercoledì* del mese *dalle ore 13 alle ore 14* il Centro Nexa organizza anche i "*Nexa Lunch Seminar*". Una lista di tutti i “Lunch Seminar” passati è disponibile all'indirizzo: http://nexa.polito.it/lunch-seminars. See our events calendar <http://nexa.polito.it/events> if you're curious about future luncheons, discussions, lectures, and conferences not listed in this email. Our events are free and open to the public, unless otherwise noted. Responsabile Comunicazione Centro Nexa su Internet & Società: *Francesco Ruggiero*, tel: +39 011 090 7219, Mob: +39 349 1335082, francesco.ruggiero(a)polito.it <mailto:francesco.ruggiero@polito.it>. Maggiori informazioni sui Mercoledì di Nexa e i Nexa Lunch Seminar, sono disponibili all'indirizzo: http://nexa.polito.it/events. Weekly Events Newsletter. Sign up <http://nexa.polito.it/mailing-lists> to receive this newsletter if this email was forwarded to you. To manage your subscription preferences, please click here <https://server-nexa.polito.it/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nexa>. Connect & get involved: Jobs, internships, and more <http://nexa.polito.it/get-involved>.

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EUNOMIA
by Giacomo April 7, 2019

April 7, 2019

https://eunomia.social/ EUNOMIA uses a positive-first approach, where good content and behavior accrue credit. As users share and consume social media content, their acts are recorded anonymously, yet socially transparently. In a verifiable way, the origin and path of each bit of content is recorded, and information cascade paths are assessed for their association with known trusted sources, which allows determining their level of trust. Once trust is attached to paths, the users and the content along them are similarly assigned levels of trustworthiness. Citizen participation is actively encouraged in content verification by allowing implicit voting on content trustworthiness and influencing the reputation of the content generators and sharers. Eunomia offers the means to any social media user to find out WHO generated any POST, HOW credible that creator and content is and IF IT CHANGED from origin to destination. EUNOMIA creates a social media companion that makes this information visible on new forms of decentralized media, such as Diaspora or Mastodon. WHO IS BEHIND THE PROJECT? A partnership of academic, non-private, and state organizations and private business aiming to interrupt the cycle of fake news. The project is funded by a 2.9 million Euro grant awarded by the highly competitive EU Horizon 2020 programme. To achieve this goal, a highly complementary consortium of 10 partners from 9 countries has joined forces with an advisory board of experts from around the world. ____ Sul fediverse sta causando un certo... panico. In effetti gli aspetti critici sono molti: l'unico modo di sapere se una affermazione (o un dato) è vera o falsa è verificarne personalmente la veridicità. Possiamo facilmente escludere la veridicità di affermazioni incompatibili con la nostra esperienza ("il bambino ha sollevato l'elefante") ma del resto possiamo solo valutare la coerenza con le conoscenze pregresse. Per cui un sistema autonomo potrebbe facilmente essere manipolato per far passare una notizia vera ma imprevedibile (primavera araba? Torri gemelle? Snowden) come Fake News, disincentivando o rallentando la sua diffusione. Immaginate quali manipolazioni borsistiche si potrebbero fare se la notizia fosse "Unicredit dichiara bancarotta" e la notizia impiegasse giorni a circolare. Il software non può risolvere la crisi di credibilità delle istituzioni (e del giornalismo fra queste), ma se usato impropriamente può peggiorare notevolmente la qualità della democrazia, riducendo la varietà di voci senza aumentare la qualità dei messaggi. Probabilmente bisognerebbe far vedere ai ricercatori gli archivi dei quotidiani e dei settimanali italiani negli anni del Berlusconismo. Forse, vedendo "la macchina del fango" all'opera, sarebbero più cauti nel ricondurre la verità a "trusted sources". Giacomo

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