Introductory Reading (for Wednesday, Jan. 19)

Read Chapter 1 of the text

  1. Be sure you understand the following terms:
    1. Confidentiality
    2. Integrity
    3. Availability
    4. Authenticity

  2. Be able to give concrete examples of threats to each of the above (from the reading or from a news item).

Read "Information Security: 50 Years Behind, 50 Years Ahead"

This article is by Whitfield Diffie, one of the inventors of public key cryptography. The article appeared in the January 2008 issue of the Communications of the ACM (CACM), an issue celebrating the 50th anniversary of the CACM. It gives a very brief overview of computer security in the last 50 years and looks at the future.

  1. What topics or concepts in the paper do you need more information about to fully understand?

  2. What is Diffie's opinion of the state of computer security today compared to that of cryptography?

  3. What are the two challenges to computer security he sees?