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Research Projects You Should Know About

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the listen-up dept.

Anonymous Coward writes "Here is a look at 10 current IT and network research projects, from active cookies to faster wireless LANs to the latest anti-phishing schemes, that could be making their way out of labs and into companies and homes soon." Still no virtual sandwich I see.

12 of 56 comments (clear)

  1. Huh. by darkhitman · · Score: 5, Funny

    Those are the ones that weren't censored out, I assume. The real list goes something like this: 1- Virtual pr0n 2- More of the above 3- See one and two 4- Identity-theft wizard 5- 1,2,3.

    --
    Tell me something...it's still "We, the people"... right?
  2. Re:sharing Wi-fi? by red5 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "Steal", "Share"? It's all just a matter of semantics these days.

    --
    I know I'm going to hell, I'm just trying to get good seats.
  3. Here's a cool one by slashbob22 · · Score: 4, Funny

    "Sharing Wi-Fi with your neighbors" - Sign me up for my Doctorate. I've been doing research into this for years. So far I have determined that it works fairly well.

    I RTFA and I don't believe this is anything new; it is essentially a software based SLA with your neighbors. Frankly, I have been doing this with neighbors for a while now, albeit I do know them well.

    --
    Proof by very large bribes. QED.
  4. Already done... by kihjin · · Score: 5, Funny

    One of the ten research projects is "Human beings that live in computers."

    Interesting idea, but not original: /. started this in 1997.

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  5. Active cookies? by beavis88 · · Score: 4, Funny

    That one sounds like it's straight out of 1999. Quick, someone register a .com and call the VC firms!

    1. Re:Active cookies? by smclean · · Score: 4, Informative
      The active cookie proposal actually didn't seem like such a bad idea. I dug through all the fluff and actually found the whitepaper on that one:

      http://www.ravenwhite.com/files/activecookies--28_ Apr_06.pdf

      From what I've gathered, basically, they seek to stop the threat of DNS poisoning and passive-snooping man-in-the-middle impersonation of a users' session by tagging cookies in the client's browser with an IP address rather than a domain name, then redirecting users from the DNS-resolved websites to that same IP (only to send their cookies), and ensuring (on the machine pointed to by that IP) that the IP address of the connection which was sent the redirection and the IP address that is now sending back the cookie to match up.

      This does seem like quite a bit of work to go through to stop what are probably relatively uncommon attacks though.

      --

      "'Yrch!' said Legolas, falling into his own tongue."

  6. Politicks by crazyjeremy · · Score: 4, Funny
    #8 is "Human beings that live in computers".... it says
    Politicians could one day determine the results of elections before they take place
    Isn't that already how it is now? At least in Florida...
    --
    Funnypics
  7. The BIG 3D imaging problem is... by geerbox · · Score: 5, Informative

    ...not really bandwidth, but storage.

    I've been lucky to head to a couple of optics conferences, and with the keynote presentations that has been the one surprising thing (to me as a layman) that comes up time after time.

    10Gbps throughput via optics is great; in fact, with the use of optics, the amount of data that can be collected for, say, scanning living tissue, is enormous. Finding a storage mechanism large enough and fast enough to store seemingly infinite amount of information, though, have been the researchers' concern.

    What did they think was a solution for this? You guessed it, optical storage.

  8. The key to going where Google isn't... by b0r1s · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Is to explore the content that Google ignores. The next 'breakthrough' in search engines will advance on Google Images and Google Video by being able to discover objects in images and understand text in video.

    Being able to search video hosting sites for a phrase without requiring manual entry of the script (if one even exists) would be incredibly useful.

    --
    Mooniacs for iOS and Android
  9. Knock knock... by Cephei · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "Sir, we have a warrent to get any encryption keys you have on your computer. You cleared your cookies in IE? Well that's too bad." -handcuff-

    It gets easier and easier to get arrested.

  10. 10 projects, 11 pages, 55 ads by drDugan · · Score: 4, Informative

    title says it all. yet another web presentation optimized for ad presentation.

    yuk.

  11. Active Cookies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    You can download the Active Cookies whitepaper from the front page of http://www.ravenwhite.com./

    It appears that Raven White, in association with RSA Laboratories, are proposing an extension to the HTTP cookie scheme whereby a cookie could be associated with an IP address rather than a domain. This would, according to them, allow a site to store a shared secret on the client which could not be obtained by third parties via a "pharming" (DNS/browser location spoofing) attack.

    I'm not going to argue about the merits of the scheme they are proposing - it appears to be relatively functional.

    What I don't understand is why, if what they're proposing requires extensions to the existing behavioural specification, they don't look at a challenge-response style method of cookie acquisition. This would remove the tying of cookie "ownership" to the DNS hierarchy and permit a more robust scheme of sharing information between the client and server.

    A valid anology to the current system might be:
    Me: Hi, my name's Malcolm, can I have the secret documents?
    You: You walked in when I asked for Malcolm - here they are.

    White Raven's scheme:
    Me: Hi, can I have the secret documents?
    You: I recognise you from the last time I spoke to Malcolm - here they are.

    Cookie auth scheme:
    Me: Hi, can I have the secret documents? Here's the password we agreed on earlier.
    You: I recognise that password, you must be the entity I spoke to earlier or an agent thereof. Here's the documents!

    I concede that the IP based cookie distribution system is simpler - but it's not much simpler, it is still open to attacks and it is less flexible. Is there something I'm missing?

    Malcolm