Computing Community Consortium Blog

The goal of the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is to catalyze the computing research community to debate longer range, more audacious research challenges; to build consensus around research visions; to evolve the most promising visions toward clearly defined initiatives; and to work with the funding organizations to move challenges and visions toward funding initiatives. The purpose of this blog is to provide a more immediate, online mechanism for dissemination of visioning concepts and community discussion/debate about them.


Archive for November 29th, 2011

 

DARPA May Pursue Crowdsourced Software Testing

November 29th, 2011 / in research horizons, resources / by Erwin Gianchandani

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Information Innovation Office (I2O) announced last week its intention to issue, perhaps in December, a solicitation for Crowd Sourced Formal Verification (CSFV), with the goal of investigating “innovative approaches that automatically create games capable of transforming formal verification problems into compelling games for end users to play.” From the official notification: Currently, formal program verification is not widely practiced due to high costs and the fact that fundamental program verification problems resist automation. This is particularly an issue for the Department of Defense because formal verification, while a proven method for reducing defects in software, currently requires highly specialized talent and cannot be scaled to the […]

“Millions of Printers Open to Hack Attack”

November 29th, 2011 / in Research News / by Erwin Gianchandani

An interesting computer security research result making news this morning — and stirring some controversy — courtesy of msnbc.com: Could a hacker from half-way around the planet control your printer and give it instructions so frantic that it could eventually catch fire? Or use a hijacked printer as a copy machine for criminals, making it easy to commit identity theft or even take control of entire networks that would otherwise be secure?   It’s not only possible, but likely, say researchers at Columbia University, who claim they’ve discovered a new class of computer security flaws that could impact millions of businesses, consumers, and even government agencies [more after the jump…]. […]