Communications of the ACM
What Would the Chatbot Say?
Seeking to explain the unanticipated abilities of large language models.
From ACM NewsAn edited collection of advanced computing news from Communications of the ACM, ACM TechNews, other ACM resources, and news sites around the Web.
From ACM Careers
Backslash: Anti-Surveillance Gadgets For Protesters
When riot police descended on protesters in Ferguson, Missouri, last year sporting assault rifles and armored vehicles, the images sparked an awareness of the military...
From ACM News
How the Nsa Can Break Trillions of Encrypted Web and Vpn Connections
For years, privacy advocates have pushed developers of websites, virtual private network apps, and other cryptographic software to adopt the Diffie-Hellman cryptographic...
From ACM News
How Soviets sed IBM Selectric Keyloggers to Spy on S Diplomats
A National Security Agency memo that recently resurfaced a few years after it was first published contains a detailed analysis of what very possibly was the world's...
From ACM News
Europe's Highest Court Strikes Down Safe Harbor Data Sharing Between Eu, US
Europe's top court, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), has struck down the 15-year-old Safe Harbour agreement that allowed the free flow of information...
From ACM News
Reflective Satellites May Be the Future of High-End Encryption
Quantum key distribution is regularly touted as the encryption of the future. While the keys are exchanged on an insecure channel, the laws of physics provide a...
From ACM Careers
Robokiller Wins Ftc Prize By Annihilating Robocalls
A new technology called "RoboKiller" has won a $25,000 grand prize from the Federal Trade Commission in the agency's "Robocalls: Humanity Strikes Back" contest...
From ACM News
Google Ordered to Remove Links to Stories about Google Removing Links to Stories
The U.K.'s Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has ordered Google to remove links from its search results that point to news stories reporting on earlier removals...
From ACM News
Nsa Preps Quantum-Resistant Algorithms to Head Off Crypto-Apocalypse
The National Security Agency is advising U.S. agencies and businesses to prepare for a time in the not-too-distant future when the cryptography protecting virtually...
From ACM News
Warrantless Phone Tapping, Email Spying Inching to Supreme Court Review
In 2013, the Supreme Court rejected a challenge to a once-clandestine warrantless surveillance program that gobbles up Americans' electronic communications—a project...
From ACM News
'epic' Fail—how Opm Hackers Tapped the Mother Lode of Espionage Data
Government officials have been vague in their testimony about the data breaches—there was apparently more than one—at the Office of Personnel Management.
From ACM News
Shock European Court Decision: Websites Are Liable For sers' Comments
In a surprise decision, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg has ruled that the Estonian news site Delfi may be held responsible for anonymous...
From ACM News
How the End of Patriot Act Provisions Changes Nsa Surveillance
Thanks to resistance from Senator Rand Paul and other members of the Senate, the provisions of the USA Patriot Act that were used to justify the National Security...
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Researchers Craft Network Attack to 'hack' Surgical Robot (sort Of)
As part of a series of experiments, a group of researchers at the University of Washington's BioRobotics Lab launched denial-of-service attacks against a remotely...
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Project Elysium Wants to se Vr to Revive Deceased Loved Ones
How far is too far when it comes to pushing the boundaries of virtual reality?
From ACM News
2,636 Icelandic Genomes Pinpoint Risk For Alzheimer's, Other Diseases
An Icelandic genetics firm has sequenced the genomes of 2,636 of its countrymen and women, finding genetic markers for a variety of diseases, as well as a new timeline...
From ACM Opinion
Surveillance-Based Manipulation: How Facebook or Google Could Tilt Elections
Someone who knows things about us has some measure of control over us, and someone who knows everything about us has a lot of control over us.
From ACM Opinion
Secrets Become History: Edward Snowden in Citizenfour Wins Documentary Oscar
Citizenfour is filmmaker Laura Poitras' account of the first meetings between herself, Glenn Greenwald, and Edward Snowden.
From ACM News
How Hackers Could Attack Hard Drives to Create a Pervasive Backdoor
News that a hacking group within or associated with the National Security Agency compromised the firmware of hard drive controllers from a number of manufacturers...
From ACM News
If Software Looks Like a Brain and Acts Like a Brain—will We Treat It Like One?
Long the domain of science fiction, researchers are now working to create software that perfectly models human and animal brains.
From ACM Careers