Communications and Security: The Rogue Hotspot

Society is always on the go and wireless hotspots are popping up in nearly every busy area.  Local coffee shops, airports, busses, and even downtown free WiFi zones are being set up to satisfy society's desire to be connected to the internet.  These hotspots are usually free or require a small fee to use and are open to the public. You might think all is well, but there could be a danger lurking within these portals to cyberspace. One such danger is called a Rogue Hotspot.

Imagine you are at the airport and you want to check your e-mail before your flight departs so you connect to the local Wi-Fi zone.  This could be free or a paid service and you log on. You check your e-mail and post something on facebook while finishing your cup of coffee. Everything seems to be fine. What's really going on is that the hotspot you connected through was some person on a laptop nearby just posing to be a legitimate public Wi-Fi hotspot. While you were checking your email and poking on facebook, he/she was searching your computer for banking, credit card and other sensitive information.  If you were unfortunate enough to have given up your credit card because the hotspot had charged you to connect, the crook gets your fee and is selling your card to others. 

There are some simple steps you can do to help protect yourself from such threats. Make sure you are not set up to connect to non-preferred networks. For a PC in the advanced wireless settings under the network settings uncheck the "connect to non-preferred networks".  In a Mac go to the network pane in the System Preferences and check the "Ask to join new networks".  You can also purchase a reloadable or disposable Visa card to use in case you are charged a fee to use a hotspot. This way your credit card is not broadcasted if the transaction happens to be intercepted. It would be wise to just ask an employee what if the establishment offers Wi-Fi and what the name of it is. This article on the dangers of rogue hotspots mentions that the most common name for a fake hotspot is "Free Public Wi-Fi".  Also by avoiding any banking or online shopping while on a public Wi-Fi you prevent anyone from intercepting your personal information by simply not using it.

Artificial Intelligence: S Voice Personal Assistant by Samsung

 

 

Artificial Intelligence is "1: a branch of computer science dealing with the simulation of intelligent behavior in computers  2: the power of a machine to copy intelligent human behavior: as defined by Mariam Webster. The topic of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the most elusive topics in both Computer Science and Science Fiction. AI can be seen in many things such as video games, toys, search engines and personal assistant applications. One of my favorite applications of Artificial Intelligence is in S Voice Personal Assistant application of the Samsung Galaxy S4.

S Voice is an application that comes with the Samsung Galaxy S4 which allows the user to use voice commands to do many tasks such as make a call, text message, e-mail, or even update a facebook status. The intelligent interface will respond to the commands and even talk back to you as if it was a real life personal assistant.  This feature comes in handy while driving a car due to the fact that driving while using a mobile phone is dangerous, it is illegal, and since April 2013 the cost of a ticket  in California is $159! Here is an example of me making a text message using S Voice by just talking to my phone. 

Me: "Hi Galaxy"
Me: "Text Eddie"
Galaxy: "What's your message?"
Me: "What are you up to?"
Galaxy: "Here is your message. Ready to send it?"
Me: "Yes"
Galaxy: "OK, I sent it"


It really is that easy. By just talking this application acts just like my own personal assistant. I had asked S Voice "What are you up to?" and she replied "Learning more about humans, like I do every day". So I replied, "I am bored", and she replied "Let's find a way to shake things up." If I said I was hungry S Voice would give me a list of places to eat nearby. I have noticed a bit of sassiness has been designed into the attitude of the S Voice. Not only has this artificially intelligent program made my day a little bit easier it has also made me laugh. There are many other things S Voice can do. Here is a list of other things.

As technology advances and we program computers to be more "intelligent", we move closer to a world where Science Fiction becomes our reality. Maybe someday we might just see some of the Science Fiction images come to life in the real world.

The History of Computer Science: The Internet and America Online

 

My first computer was a Macintosh IIsi. It featured a whopping 20 MHz 6803 processor, 5MB of RAM, and an 80 MB hard drive. I mostly used it for word processing and to play a few games. Back then the internet was on the rise but the cost of owning a modem was around $500 and connected through the telephone (called a dial-up connection) much like how a fax machine does. Here is a list of a few modems available then. In 1995 CompuServe, America Online (AOL), and Prodigy began providing dial-up access. This is the year Sun Microsystems developed the internet programming language called Java. In the late 90's use of the internet was gaining popularity as the price of modems became affordable and numerous dial-up providers marketed to gain customers.

At that time I had jumped on the bandwagon and subscribed monthly to AOL for around $30 or $40 a month. Soon installation CDs offering free hours or a free month of internet access to new subscribers began showing up everywhere. How can anyone forget those AOL CDs? If you were in the United States in the 90's the AOL cd image should be bring back some memories. They were literally everywhere. AOL's former CMO told TechCrunch that they had spent more than $300 million on those installation CDs and “at one point, 50% of the CD’s produced worldwide had an AOL logo on it.” AOL In a 2007 USA Today report of the 25 things that changed the Internet, AOL ranked 4th and had turned people on to Web portals, chat rooms, and instant messaging. In 1996 approximately 45 million people were using the internet. 44% of U.S. households owned a computer and 14 million of them were online.

As technology progressed, the emergence of broadband connections such as DSL and Cable connections took over offering faster speeds. Internet usage was becoming global and in 2002 it was reported that 544.2 million users were on the internet. Now a connection to the internet has become more readily available. Cell phones, Free Wi-Fi, mobile hotspots and fast DSL and Cable connections at home make connecting to the internet almost a necessity. The Internet World Stats reported that in 2012 almost 2.5 billion people worldwide are connected to the internet.

File Sharing: The History of Music, Music Clouds and Peer-to-Peer File Sharing

A long time ago before the era of computers and information storage people were limited in how or where they could listen to music. They could either play it themselves or listen to someone else sing or play it in front of them.  A few centuries later the invention of the radio emerged and people were able to listen to whatever was being broadcast to them (provided they had a radio receiver and were in range of the transmitter). Fast forward a few decades and new technologies for recording music came about like the Phonograph Cylinder (1877), magnetic tape (1930's), Vinyl Record (1948),  compact cassette (1963), and Compact Disc (1982). These types of media allowed people to listen to music as they please although all of them had various limitations with the media type and machines which played them. New digital media formats emerged and more portable media players were developed. This created a desire for music lovers to collect music and build a vast digital library. File sharing has become a primary means of getting music. Now with increasing technology and the rise of the Internet we have cloud music services which promise to give unprecedented access to music. This type of file sharing uses interfaces which allow people to access music across a wide variety of devices, including computers, MP3 Players, smartphones and video game consoles.  People can collect a nearly unlimited amount of music and enjoy it in more places than ever before.  These services use the file sharing technology of Cloud Computing to deliver music. They utilize computer servers connected to the internet to let you access information.

There are two types of cloud storage music services.  One of them is similar to the radio. This version takes listening to the radio on a new level.  Services like Spotify allow people to search and add or delete songs to a music library allowing the user to create their own personal radio station. 

The other type of music file sharing cloud gives the user much more freedom.  These services like the Amazon Cloud Player and Google Music store your music remotely and acts like an external hard drive for your music. Alternatively, you might be able to download the actual file to a device which will allow you to play the music anywhere regardless of being connected to the internet.  These services usually have a limit to the number of songs one can keep in their library and the fact that most of the music must be bought brings about the popular use of peer-to-peer file sharing applications in order to build extensive music libraries.

There are many application services to download music which usually involves file sharing amongst peers. Applications like Blubster, BearShare, BitTorrent and many others allow files to be shared between the individual users of the service.  This includes videos, documents and any other type of digital media as well as music files.  Although this type of file transfer is usually free, there are issues of downloading a virus and whether or not the sharing of these files is legal and not breaking any Copyright laws. 

Data Structures: The Array The Stack and The Queue

In the world of Computer Science there exist many types of storing data.  A popular type of storing data is in the form of an array.  In programming an array is defined as a series of objects all of which are of the same size and type. Arrays can be simply described as a list of objects.  Imagine a deck of cards and each card was a data object with attributes like the number or value of the card, the suit, and pictures on the face and back of the card. The complete deck can be looked at as an array of cards. In turn the whole deck of cards can be referred to as an object in itself. Arrays are one of the first data structures a programmer learns and manipulation and access of data is what programming is all about. Two specialized versions of an array which have unique abilities are the Stack and Queue.

A Stack is a group of objects formed by stacking one object on top of another and implements the last-in-first-out (LIFO) principle. The operations of a Stack are push and pop. The push operation is used to add items to the stack which puts the item on the top. The pop operation is used to remove an item which removed the item at the top.  A commonly seen example of a Stack is the "undo" function in text editors. When the text has changed, the change is pushed on a stack.  When the user wants to "undo" the latest change in text the change is easily accessed by popping it off the stack.

A Queue (like the Stack) is a group of objects but uses the first-in-first-out (FIFO) principle.  The operations of a Queue are enqueue and decueue.  The enqueue operation is used to add an object to the Queue array by placing the object in the back of any other objects already in the Queue.  The dequeue operation is used to remove or retrieve an object. The first object is returned and removed with the dequeue operation.  A common use of a Queue is a waiting list when registering for classes. When a class is full a waiting list is created making a list of people wanting to be in the class in case someone already registered in the class decides to remove themselves from it.  This would make an available spot open for enrollment and the waiting list provides a fair opportunity for the first person to try to add the class when it became full.

For more information about Stacks and Queues see David Galles "Data Structure Visualizations" at The University of San Francisco here.

Hacking: Black Hats and White Hats

When most people think of the word “hacker” they think of someone who is a malicious computer user up to no good.  Beware the hacker who is trying to steal your personal information, spread computer viruses, or even start a war by infiltrating military computer systems.  While there is no denying there are hackers with bad intentions, the truth is that they make up only a small percentage of the hacker community.  Not all computer hackers focus on the exploitation of others.  In fact, many hackers who once used their talents to break into systems now put their skills to use by creating better software or strengthening security.  In a way, the Internet is a battleground between different kinds of hackers. The bad guys, or black hats, who try to infiltrate systems and spread viruses, and the good guys, or white hats, who focus on security and develop powerful virus protection software.

Here are a couple of well-known computer hackers.

            Steve Wozniak

Before he co-founded Apple Computers, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs built something called a blue box. This was an electronic device that allowed users to make free long distance calls by emulating the in-band signaling mechanism.  Wozniak and Jobs sold these devices to their fellow classmates.

 

David Smith          

David Smith is known for being the author of the infamous e-mail virus, Melissa.  The Melissa virus was based on a macro in a Microsoft Word document. Once activated the virus would replicate and e-mail itself to the top 50 people in the recipient’s address book.  Smith claimed the virus was never intended to cause any harm, but the increase in e-mail traffic forced some companies to discontinue e-mail programs until the virus was contained.